


look for the silver lining

by ChillCapivara



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, George R. R. Martin's biggest casualty is my social life, I have no self-control, I'm Bad At Tagging, Inspired by Downton Abbey, Julian Fellowes is also to blame, Mutual Pining, Period Typical Attitudes, World War I, because honestly what a show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-03-15 18:48:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13619472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChillCapivara/pseuds/ChillCapivara
Summary: It is 1916 when Captain Stark is granted leave for a few days. Going all the way up to the North would not be worth the trip, as he would not have much time to rest. His comrade in arms, Lieutenant Dayne, suggests then that the Captain visit his family's estate - a place by the name of Starfall.(Title is from the 1921 song by Jerome Kern & B. G. DeSylva, for the unsuccessful musical Zip Goes a Million.)





	1. Etiquette

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_The sun rose over the sweep of the hill_

_All bare for the gathered hay,_

_And a blackbird sang by the window-sill,_

_And a girl knelt down to pray:_

_‘Whom Thou hast kept through the night, O Lord,_

_Keep Thou safe through the day.’_

_The sun rose over the shell-swept height,_

_The guns are over the way,_

_And a soldier turned from the toil of the night_

_To the toil of another day,_

_And a bullet sang by the parapet_

_To drive in the new-turned clay._

_The sun sank slow by the sweep of the hill,_

_They had carried all the hay,_

_And a blackbird sang by the window-sill,_

_And a girl knelt down to pray:_

_‘Keep Thou safe through the night, O Lord,_

_Whom Thou hast kept through the day.’_

_The sun sank slow by the shell-swept height,_

_The guns had prepared a way,_

_And a soldier turned to sleep that night_

_Who would not wake for the day,_

_And a blackbird flew from the window-sill,_

_When a girl knelt down to pray._

 

\- August 1914, by May Wedderburn Cannan

 

 

There was definitely a chill in the air when the car pulled over the gravel path, golden headlights still on, cutting their way through the mist of the early hours of day.

The wind rustled the leaves of the trees from afar and a cold breeze penetrated the few uncovered parts of her body, such as her wrists and the space between her coat and her scarf. She tightened her hold in the shawl around her shoulders in response.

The new chauffer, a Mr. Shane, was slow to open the door for the guest, and Ashara could see for the faintest of moments that the man on the backseat had reached for the opening himself. She suppressed a muted smirk, but found it interesting nonetheless.

The man emerged from the backseat and Ashara saw him taking it all in: the big house, the marble, the billow and breeze, the servants lined up. Her.

He was still dressed in his uniform, all brownish khaki, high boots, belt and cap. The boots were muddied – he had no doubt just gotten there from the trenches, and probably had not encountered an abundance of places in which he could change clothes, but Ashara did not have to glance at her butler to know that there was a look of disapproval etching his features.

The man approached her carefully.

“Lady Ashara”, he addressed her, taking off his cap. “Eddard Stark. It is an honor to meet you personally.”

“Likewise, Captain Stark”, she nodded. “This is our butler, Penn”, Ashara indicated her butler with a gracious wave of her arm.

Penn did his absolute best to hide a semi stroke when Captain Stark extended his hand for him to shake. After a moment of hesitation, the butler decided that it was better to endeavor in this strange greeting than to make Her Ladyship or her guest embarrassed, so he shakily and quickly responded the handshake, not fully able to hide his exasperation despite his best efforts.

“Wren here shall act as your valet, sir”, Penn presented a man who was obviously way past the age of conscription, and Captain Stark nodded stiffly.

“Shall we go in?”, Ashara asked, gesturing for them to take their cue.

“Actually, my lady, is there a back entrance to the estate? Perhaps an alternative hallway? I would not want the poor state of my vestments to cause any extra tribulations to the staff.”

Ashara and the whole staff of Starfall were astonished for a few seconds.

That was an unprecedented event at Starfall. Never had someone asked for something like that, and because of reasons like those.

Ashara’s eyes imperceptibly widened and her immediate thoughts were of a snobbish nature, thinking Captain Stark below her for not following etiquette, but then she reminded herself that she also would not know what would be the standard procedure, were she in his position.

“I am sure that walking through the main hall will not cause many grievances to anybody”, she assured Captain Stark, not unkindly.

“After you, then, my lady.”

A gentleman would extend his arm for her to hold on to. He did not, and her arms fell awkwardly beside her as they walked through the hall. At least the air was warmer on the inside.

“I would usually suggest a tour of the estate, but I have a feeling that you might want to... Take a rest beforehand”, she dictated, pleasing herself for correctly predicting him when he nearly sighed in relief.

The man was clearly tired. Judging by his weary expression and the bags under his eyes, he probably had not slept in days. Following (feigning) usual etiquette with him would not be of much use, seeing as he had already discarded it earlier. This was prone to be a most unusual arrangement.

“Thank you, my lady”, he replied simply. She thought that it said everything that needed to be said.

“The gong will be rung at noon. Wren here will assist you, as Penn has mentioned.”

“Yes”, he hastened. “I take my leave.”

They nodded at each other, and he had the grace to bow for longer than before. When he went up the stairs, Ashara caught sight of Wren presenting the Captain to his accommodations.

She soon occupied her thoughts with more pressing matters. There was a business to manage, investments to be made and bills to pay.

When the task of administering the affairs of her family fell down on her, Ashara thought that she would never be capable to step up to her brothers’ work, much less her father’s, but she had unexpectedly found the task ahead to be rewarding. Not quite easy, certainly challenging, and unbelievably liberating.

Her dear papa was gone, Allen and Arthur were far away, and so were Elia and Allyria. Only she remained.

Ashara thought that it was a lonely life she was leading at the moment, but there was a world of difference between her present responsibilities and the previous ones. Managing the estate agreed more with her interests than paying social calls, and although there was a thin layer of guilt for enjoying the act of taking up her brothers’ place, she had never felt like she belonged more at Starfall than at the present moment.

“My lady”, Penn called her, bowing his neck. “Lunch is served.”

She looked up from the accounting book, frowning.

“Is Captain Stark already in good form?”

Penn did not smile _per se,_ but he looked at her lightly and answered her with a tone that suggested fondness.

“Yes, my lady. He is awaiting you.”

“Well, then. I would not want to keep our guest waiting.” She got up from the seat and left all her books sprawled across her study, and she could understand why Penn had been especially nice to her that day: buried underneath piles of paperwork, her back hunched over the table to better look at the minuscule numbers (she really needed a new pair of glasses), she must have resembled her ten-year-old self, when her governess forced her to spend long hours on the library trying to resolve calculations on sines, cosines and tangents. Her brothers had understood it easily, while she had had to struggle more, especially with the schizophrenic algebra.

Penn had been kind to her then. She remembered it clearly, the old butler waiting outside the library for the governess to go relief herself, and then sneaking into the secluded room with milk and cookies. Ashara had laughed in delight and the butler had grinned at her, quickly exiting the room, lest the governess caught him.

Ashara was shaken out of her thoughts when Penn himself opened the door, reminding her that the Captain was already in the dinner hall.

The Captain was standing on the opposite edge of a table that was far too big for these times. The vacant seats were somehow more evident now that he was here than before, when she had taken to eat her meals alone.

Penn pulled out her chair, and Wren pulled out the Captain’s. The dishes were served, one by one, and Ashara found it curious when the Captain refused the wine. Most men would have seized the opportunity to drink at these times. She did not dare ask his motives for refusing, it was simply not polite.

Conversation consisted mostly of small talk. Ashara could see that the Captain was somewhat anxious, and, if she made an effort, she could see why. The transition between the trenches and the luxurious estate had to be abrupt and rather striking. There was a blatant difference between the muddy front and the expensive dinner hall they were (not quite) feasting in, despite what the papers might say. Arthur had said it himself on his letters, “ _...Looking back now, Starfall seems more and more to me as if it were another world._ ”

Not quite sure on how to put her guest at ease, Ashara suggested the only proposition she could think of.

“Captain Stark, would you accompany me on a walk through the estate?”

He glanced at her eyes then, and she feared he would cower after her suggestion, but then his demeanor hardened again and he spoke collectedly, “Yes, my lady.”

 _‘Yes, my lady’,_ he said. Not ‘ _most definitely_ ’, ‘ _it would be an honor_ ’, ‘ _nothing could please me more than that_ ’.

Penn retrieved her light coat and one of her afternoon hats. Ashara and the Captain got out to walk. Captain Stark did not feel much in the obligation to fill the silence with small talk and Ashara did not exactly know how to approach him. In all her years of social life, people had always been very different from him. He was a different animal altogether.

“Where were you born, Captain?”, she asked, turning to the left path, into the small woods of the estate. The irony of her situation was not lost on her: she was wandering into the woods with a man without a chaperone, and, for once, it was not due to her wicked intentions, but mostly because there was no one else left to chaperone her.

“In the North. Winterfell.”

“I am not familiar with it.”

She saw from the corner of her eye when he gazed a second too long at her.

“Yes, I did not imagine you were.”

_Cheeky._

“What does that mean?”, and she couldn’t resist enunciating that sentence in a tone that resembled her early girlish talk.

“Nothing”, the Captain was blunt, “only that you do not strike me as someone who would willingly travel to Winterfell.”

Ashara would rather believe that the Captain was too naïve to perceive the insult behind his words than to think he meant them deliberately offensive.

“And why is that?”

The Captain fumbled for words.

“I believe there are... Many kinds of people, my lady. You learn to differentiate one from another.”

She knew that her reply would have some bite, and before she could even formulate it in her head, the words flew off her tongue.

“Some people would call you a snob for saying that, Captain.”

“I did not mean to insult you”, he said gravellier, as if expecting a blow.

“No, I do not believe you did.”   

Ashara saw him getting worked up. He breathed loudly through his mouth, and then added hurriedly, “Some people would call you a snob for smirking at my manners.”

Her steps came to a halt.

“I had not found your manners lacking”, she affirmed, not afraid of saying it to his face.

“You did not think less of me when you saw the way I was dressed?”

Apparently, he was not afraid of confronting her either.

“I am going to be honest with you, Captain”, Ashara could see his impassive face, probably bracing himself for impact. “Had you arrived here dressed like that, say, five years ago, your suspicions would have been proven correct. I would think you below me. I would have snorted derisively at the way you did not manage to change, I would have smirked at you for asking for another route, and I would probably joke about you being so very unsophisticated. But the times have changed, and so have I.”

Captain Stark seemed to be placated by her honesty.

“In what ways?”, he dared to ask.

“Well”, and she struggled to admit it without sentimentality, but holding on to reason was something that she had ultimately learnt with the passing of time, “I should find that etiquette is not as crucial as morality during wartime.”

A pair of wrinkles showed up by the sides of the Captain’s eyes, and Ashara suspected that he might have smiled, perhaps if they were more well-acquainted.

He looked around them and noticed that they had stopped in the middle of the trail with the sole intention to bicker. He resumed his walk then, and she followed closely.

“I judged you too quickly”, he admitted, and it was a balm to her wounds. “You must forgive me, my lady.”

It was not defeat that she heard in his tone. It was concession. Grace.

“There is nothing to forgive, Captain”, she risked a timid smile, “as I have also misjudged you.”

He clicked his tongue, eyeing the woods, still aware of her presence besides him. “We should be friends”, he propositioned, and what did she have to lose at accepting his offer?

“Indeed”, she replied good-naturedly, and then there was peace all through their walk.

The Captain was something else. Ashara refrained from lingering on why.

 

_ Starfall, Southeast of Dornish County, England, 1916.  _

_My dearest friend,_

_It is two in the afternoon now. The weather is fine, I will not waste your (or my) time by describing how eerie the breeze was earlier this morning. How I wish Ms. Brontë had had the same sense._

_Last I heard of you, you had many reasons to believe your life would change very much, very soon; and so, after a month, these suspicions must have come to an end. I ask of you: did they come to fruition? Are you in a newfound position of motherhood?_

_Whatever is the outcome, please know that you shall always be welcome at Starfall. We could move mountains together if you so needed. I hope you are acutely aware that you can rely on me for whatever may come. Please answer me back as soon as possible._

_There is not much else I could tell you. Your younger brother stopped writing me, and while I am certainly worried, word has arrived via Allen that Oberyn has been assigned to a battalion dispatched to overseas, and so the distance should be the reason of his inconstant correspondence; though, frankly, I could think of simpler reasons, such as your brother’s incapacity to memorize an address. I also cannot quite picture him sitting with a list of the people he should write to, drinking tea. I keep him in my thoughts, nevertheless, and ask that, should this letter reach you in good state, you update me on his whereabouts._

_The most interesting thing (apart from my family’s business, which I know you do not find very exciting for some indescribable motive) to happen here recently is an arrangement made by Arthur. He wrote me a while ago warning me that one of his comrades in arms had been granted leave, and that I should expect him to come by to Starfall within the month. Fifteen days later, another letter came by, by one Captain Stark. The letter was written in rough calligraphy, though every spelling mistake was corrected in an elegant erasure. I admit that I did not think much of it. The contents of the letter were perfectly practical, without any flourishes; and so, I was expecting a greying middle-aged man to come by._

_Captain Stark is not middle-aged. I should think we are of the same age. He has a crisp accent, as hard as his handwriting; but he is not bad company, although I do find it hard to imagine how he managed to befriend Arthur, since they are so unlike in matters of behavior. Arthur is an easy-going chap, and Captain Stark… is not._

_I will write to you again, when there are new developments. I do hope you’ll reply me soon. I am getting anxious in this state of waiting for everyone to write me back._

_Wishing that you are in the most excellent health and happiest of states,_

_Ashara._

 

“Tell me, Captain, how did you come to make my brother’s acquaintance?”, Ashara asked when they were dining, and Captain Stark was evidently trying to control himself, so as not to swallow the whole dinner at once.

The Captain halted at her question. His movements were abruptly at a standstill, and he seemed to consider an appropriate answer for far too long.

“We met on the front”, he said curtly, evasively. She should know better than to press for the gory details, but still the doubt showed on her nonchalant features. He decided to indulge her. “After a few weeks of… acquaintance, I was granted leave, and your brother kindly suggested that I came here, instead of going all the way up to the North. As much as I want to go back home, it isn’t worth the trip. I would be left with too little time to actually rest.”

“If I dare ask, why did you not stay in France?”

He looked at her as if she were alien to him.

She had no way of knowing.

He gulped.

“I missed England.”

She was contented with this answer, and chuckled soundlessly.

Ashara also knew that the Captain was more inclined to to lively conversation when the servants were absent. They made him more uneasy, as if his movements were being watched.

On a normal dinner party, the women would retire first and then the men would stay behind to smoke cigars and talk about matters that they deemed the women incapable of understanding, and then both parties would rejoin at the drawing room, until the participants retired, one by one. This would not be the case this day, as the party solely consisted of two individuals of opposite genders.

They both went through to the drawing room. Penn served whisky from the tumbler for Her Ladyship and a mere cup of water for the Captain. Ashara then dismissed the butler for the day, bidding him good night.

“So”, she started, crossing her legs on the chaise longue, “you can tell me now why you missed England.”

He arched both eyebrows, not impressed.

“I suppose the weather is more agreeable.”

Two could play that game.

“You would rather have English rain than French sunset?”

He smiled scathingly.

“Where is your patriotism?”, the Captain asked, not very reproachfully.

Ashara leered slightly and raised her glass at him in cheers. Bombarding him with questions would lead to nowhere, so she decided to just lay back and let things be.

She got up from her seat and turned to face the window. She could see the nearby woods, now engulfed in near complete darkness. There were tales of electric lights being installed in London, but that technology still had not arrived at Starfall, and so, they still resorted to candle lights.

“Did you know, Captain”, she drawled, not taking her eyes off the window, “that there already is street light in London?”

She briefly glanced at Captain Stark. He pursed his lips, silently telling her to go on. She hummed.

“They are bringing these light bulbs”, Ashara told him, as one would tell a fairy-tale to a child. “It is called electric light. All very new. But they say one can’t see the stars in London anymore”, she shrugged, closing her eyes for a moment and letting the whisky wash over her. “I never cared much about it.”

“Why not?”, he asked, and, if she didn’t know him better, she would say he was faintly amused at her wonders.

“Because that’s something that a poet would say”, she explained, believing herself to be perfectly logical.

“You say the word ‘poet’ as if it were an insult.”

“Do you not think it is?”

She turned to face him completely, standing against the moonlight that the window emanated, putting on her most alluring smile.

“I think there is a need for officers, doctors and mathematicians, but there is also need for poets, as silly as that may sound.”

“Please elaborate”, she asked, raising her cup to her lips, without taking her eyes off him.

He met her stare unflinchingly.

“People need to keep their morale”, Captain Stark argued. “Poets help, in that sense.”

“They fill people’s heads with unrealistic expectations of love and fate”, she almost spat the last words, “and then people expect their lives to equal Byronian epics or Shakespearean dramas.”

He smirked into his discreet cup of water. “And people accuse _me_ of being a spoilsport.”

Ashara playfully snorted. “I should hate to be called so. It is only… after one realizes that life is not like that, one gets… disillusioned.”

His face softened.

“Yes”, Captain Stark said slowly, “yes, I know.”

She cocked an eyebrow, but smiled encouragingly, in order to display patience.

“My little sister, Lyanna”, he started to speak, and his arm dropped heavily beside him, “she thought that her life was going to be a song.”

Ashara’s heart was filled with compassion for a girl she did not know.

“And I am guessing that it was not?”, Ashara asked, watching Captain Stark’s every reaction.

“No”, he said in a raspy voice, his gaze losing itself in the patterns of the tapestry. “It was not.”

He was probably thinking of his sister, and the moment seemed to be just too intimate for Ashara to step in, which was, of course, absolute nonsense. Wherever she was, Lyanna was far away from Starfall. It was Ashara who was standing in the room with the Captain. She asked herself if she should remind him of that.

“What happened to her?”, she asked him, instead.

He was shaken out of his reverie.

“She was…”

Captain Stark’s mouth was hanging open, he was shaking his head, struggling to find the correct words.

Ashara suddenly wanted to spare him of that.

“Forgive me, Captain Stark. I did not wish to intrude.”

He looked at her gratefully.

“Thank you”, he raised his glass again and toasted her, never mind that there was only a quarter of the original liquid, “for your understanding”, after a moment’s hesitation, “and for the lovely feast.”

Ashara threw all pretenses and grinned at him, her most earnest smile in ages.

“I am glad you enjoyed yourself.”

“As I had not in years”, he said, and it came out with such hard-earned conviction that Ashara was convinced of its truthfulness, and so, was left a tad moved by Captain Stark’s sincerity

The words also had a parting tone. She vaguely wondered what would be his personal custom for saying goodbye.

“Good night, my lady”, he said, setting down his now empty cup on top of the tray. When he faced her fully, his stare piercing her own, his body ready to ask her out or to engage in a fight, she realized just how lonely she was, for her pulse was not steady for a moment or two.

“Good night, Captain Stark”, she wished him. Just as he was turning out to leave her, she spoke hastily, without thinking twice, “Ashara.”

He was startled, frozen for a split second.

She would replay the moment in which the understanding dawned upon him, how the ghost of a smile filled his shaven face.

“Eddard.”

 

 


	2. Tradition

“Good morning, Captain Stark”, Ashara greeted the man and took a bite of the scone without taking her eyes off the newspaper.

“Good morning, my lady”, he sat by her side at the table. “Good news?”, he nodded at the newspaper, while cutting a piece of bread.

“Hardly”, she scoffed. “I will not depress you with tales of woes.”

“Please do”, Captain Stark smiled kindly but decisively, and Ashara felt a chill run along her spine, but she came back from it fairly quickly.

“There has been an uprising in Ireland”, she started, “and the Germans decimated the entire 47th Brigade in a gas attack.”

Captain Stark did not recoil under her gaze.

“Is this today’s paper?”

“Yes.”

“How come it is no longer fresh, then?”, the Captain gazed inquisitively both at Ashara and at Penn.

Penn saw fit to answer him.

“We iron the papers as soon as they arrive, Captain.”

Stark was puzzled.

“You  _iron_ the papers? For what?”

“So that Her Ladyship’s hands will not be stained with ink”, Penn explained as if the concept was as obvious as the color of the sky.

Ashara saved Eddard from embarrassing himself with laughter. “Do you happen to ride, Captain?”, she intervened in hopes to divert his attention.

“I do”, he said, still the ghost of a mocking smirk on his face.

“Will you ride with me, then?”

He nodded curtly, seemingly still entertained by Starfall’s customs, and she got up to fetch her riding habit, ignoring the piles of paperwork scattered across her study. By the time she returned to the living room, Eddard could no longer conceal his grin.

“You pay people to iron your papers so your fingertips will not be smudged by a teeny bit of ink?”

Her face soured, but that was to be expected.

“We do it for the same reason as you do not”, she replied, staring right into his challenging eyes, trying to force back the laughter in her own mouth. When he didn’t back away, she completed, “Tradition.”

He seemed to accept her answer as they walked down to the stables, but then he turned to argue again.

“Is it a tradition here for women to ride as well?”

Ashara tried very hard to keep her eyes still, so as not to roll them. She should have expected this.

“Why do you care, sir?”

“We do it in the North as well”, he said, and perhaps Ashara had been mistaken on her concerns regarding the nature of his question. “I was merely surprised.”

“Because Southern women should stick to knitting, cooking and getting married?”

“I never said that”, Eddard retorted. “It is only, so many people here concern themselves with upholding traditions, that sometimes I wonder if those same traditions are not holding back true progress.”

Ashara stole a glance at him. He seemed unfazed.

“Of course women ride”, Ashara replied, not with the same intensity of the earlier debate. “It is considered a healthy and graceful physical activity.”

Ashara could guess in the back of her mind that riding didn’t hold the same meaning to him, but did not speak about it further. They reached the stables and she asked the new master of horses, Virginie, to saddle two horses.

When Virginie left to do so, Ashara whispered, “Virginie is the daughter of our old master, Phillipe. He left for the war, and then we employed her. Their family has been serving ours as stablemasters for generations, and we would not leave them in their hour of need. That is the importance of tradition, Captain. And still, for years, there had never been a stablemaster who happened to be a woman. Virginie is the first. How’s that for traditions holding back true progress, hmm?”, Ashara grinned victoriously when she mounted her horse, literally looking down on Captain Stark.

“You have a point”, Eddard conceded, stepping on the stirrup, hoisting himself up his stallion, “but you forgot something.”

Ashara dashed forward in her horse, not glancing behind to see if Eddard was close. She heard the sound of his stallion’s hooves clicking, and smiled to herself when she realized that he was eagerly following her.

“And what, pray tell, have I forgotten?”, she asked almost scornfully, not stopping to let him catch up.

“The war, Ashara”, and it was the first time he actually called her by her name, without the title coming in first. It sounded – different. “It changed everything.”

“How so?”

“I mean that… without the war, Phillipe would still be here. The war saw the forsaking of some traditions and the progress of others.”

Ashara could not argue with that. Were they still in peaceful times, Arthur and Allen would not have left, and she would still be living a life without purpose.

“You have a point”, she mirrored his own words from before. “I believe we have reached the balance.”

The conversation progressively faded into easy silence – rich silence, filled with the incredibly numerous sounds of the horses, the rustling of the grass and, as much as Ashara dreaded those, occasional stolen glances.

When the sun was high on the sky and it was no longer bearable to keep riding under those many layers of warm clothes, they stopped by the shadow of a big oak tree to try to regain their breath.

“How can you bear this heat?”, Eddard asked, and, much to Ashara’s shock, he took off his jacket in the utmost calm, standing there in front of her only in a white shirt, drenched in sweat.

His bangs were falling on his eyes, and he had to take off his glasses to rub his face with his arms, leaving his forearms exposed to her gaze. She wasn’t used to seeing forearms, and his were, somehow, undeniably… nice-looking, in a masculine way.

She saw it when a drop of sweat rolled down from his hair to his neck, then went even further down, reached his collar…

Ashara gulped, and turned around to face the oak tree. With the exception of the Martells, no one knew for certain that she had already seen men completely undressed, but those men had not had the same confidence in bed that Eddard was displaying now, only taking off his jacket.

The most dreadful and inconvenient occurrence came upon her when she felt a shot of arousal in her… her… she did not even know the name of that part of her body, only that it was located deep within her  _core._

She twisted the hem of her skirts in her palms until it ached, in hopes to stop that horrible feeling from coming upon her.

Shame and guilt overcame her. She had had intimate encounters before, but she would be lying if she said that she was completely comfortable with that fact. Far from it, actually. The negative feelings that came after the meetings far exceeded any fleeting pleasure she had found in the acts. The headaches and the consequences of her affairs still made her feeling very… dirty, and that was an adjective usually used in her weekly Sunday visitations to the church, when the priest described women who would be denied an entrance to Heaven.

Ashara thought that she had grown up after all the shaming. She thought that she had finally found her place in the world and that she would never have any  _needs_  after that, so she wanted to break her own neck when she realized that, beneath all her layers of dignity and erudition, she still had that disgraceful, reprehensible part of herself that vibrated at the sight of Captain Stark’s drenched white shirt, of his strong forearms.

Suddenly, she was transported back to when Allen and Arthur were no more than children themselves. They were making disgusted grunts at the sights of the pictures of a hidden book in the depths of their library. As a little girl herself, she was also genuinely aghast, but, when Allen and Arthur went to bed, along with everyone else at Starfall, she went down the staircases in excessively quiet footsteps, with a candle in hand, and she searched the shelves until she found the book.

The pictures were shocking. The little Ashara never got to actually see people’s bodies underneath all those clothes, clothes suffocating them from the top of their necks to their heels. The book didn’t shy away from showing the whole truth about people’s bodies, including parts that she didn’t even know existed.

She remembered tracing the outline of a phallic figure with her thumb, and then she put the book back on the shelf and ran back to her room, horrified at her own behavior.

Good girls surely did not do or feel that.

Ashara’s first  _dream_ also took place on that fatidic night. The shadowy figure of a grown-up man was taking off her pink dress, ridding her of all her suffocating clothes.

She woke up a mess of excitement, unwanted arousal and mortification.

The complicated mixture of emotions followed her all through her life, until that moment beneath the old oak tree.

“Ashara, are you quite well?”, she identified concern in Captain Stark’s voice.

She smiled painfully, ignoring the throbbing sensation at her most delicate parts.

“Why yes, Eddard”, she replied, noticing that it was the first lie she ever told him. It did not sit well on her tongue.

He had the grace to make no inquiries.

The easy silence turned into awkward on their way back to the estate. Eddard felt like there was something wrong with Ashara, and she tried her best to hide whatever thoughts crossed her mind, which unintendedly made her unreasonably aware of her surroundings. She tried to interpret Eddard’s sighs and the flicks of his eyes and to control her own darting stares; even the sound of her breathing had to be measured. She couldn’t afford to give anything away – any hints, any traces, any indications.

“My lady”, he retreated back to their usual formalities, “have I made you uncomfortable?”

 _You are acting like a child,_ Ashara berated herself.  _You are a lady now._

“No, by any means, Captain”, the word  _Captain_ sounded like, a step backwards, a complete waste of progress. “Why ever would you ask that?”

He studied her intently. She burned under his gaze.

“Forget I ever asked”, he said in turn.

Ashara gulped. She had to go back to her previous persona with him. The elegant Lady of Starfall, who could do no wrong and was the perfect hostess for any guests.

“After lunch today, would you entertain me on a walk through the village?”, Ashara spoke, surprised to hear her confidence creeping back into her voice.

Eddard’s body went rigid on top of his stallion, but he ultimately agreed to her proposition.

 

Lunch was tense. Eddard was still uncomfortable at talking whilst Penn and the footmen stood there statuesquely. Ashara was still dealing with the remnants of the impromptu pull she had felt towards Eddard earlier.

“Captain”, she attempted to distract herself from such thoughts, “you never talked much about Winterfell.”

Ashara did not know if he could see right through her intentions of diversion. If he could, he was kind to the point of indulging her with conversation. If not, he had been keen to initiate a discussion himself.

“It is very different from Starfall”, he started. “Not nearly as splendorous. The ambient is more rustic.”

“I suppose it is colder.” It was not her cleverest assumption.

“Yes.”

She cringed at his monosyllabic response, but she knew that the faux pas had been entirely hers.

“How do you… deal with it?”, she tried to fix it, so as not to appear  _completely_  weak-minded.

“The walls are made for it. We have a heating system. The rooftops are also inclined, to prevent the snow from accumulating.”

“Interesting.”

They were not in a very talkative mood, it seemed. The conversation was flat and it seemed like they had run out of subject after roughly a day and a half of coexistence. The weather finally proved to be a topic that expired rather quick.

The walk would be dreadfully boring if Ashara did not take matters into her own hands and started a decent chat. She had years’ worth of chitchat. A circumspect Northman was definitely not about to put that in jeopardy: she would strangle him into a tête-à-tête if necessary.  

“Apart from your sister, which you mentioned yesterday, do you have any more siblings?” Ashara asked when they were walking to the village. Again, her arms were hanging loosely at her sides because Eddard did not think of offering her his arm and sparing her of the subsequent clumsiness.

“I do, and are they a handful”, Eddard sighed.

Ashara smiled. “What are their names?”

“My eldest brother is Brandon. My youngest is Benjen. Lyanna is younger than me, but older than Benjen.”

“Is Benjen at home?”, she queried. The feeling she got these days at Starfall was that there was no else left, only the women, the elders and the broken men.

“Yes, he is, and losing his mind, if his letters are to be believed”, Ashara could see Eddard’s little smile at the memory of his brother, even beneath the light stubble he was growing. “He is too young to go to war, and hopefully he’ll still be too young by the time this is all over.”

Ashara thought that there wasn’t a single soul who wasn’t too young to go to war, but she kept that to herself.

“How old is he?”

“Fifteen. He was thirteen when it started.”

“How old were you?”, she asked in turn.

“Twenty-three, I think”, he was pensive for a second. “It feels like long ago”, Eddard disclosed, staring straight ahead, his shoulders hardening, making him look like a different man.

It felt like he had said something personal. Ashara was not sure on how to take that, so she went for the unconcerned approach.

“And your older brother?”

“Twenty-five”, he said, and stopped there.

Ashara was not an expert, but even still, she could tell that there was something odd there. Eddard had been as emotional as he could be when he talked of Lyanna, fond when he spoke of Benjen, and curt when he mentioned Brandon.

She knew better than to press for details, and, either way, she never got the chance to do that.

“What about you?”, Eddard asked as they rounded a corner and saw the main road for the village. “I know your brother Arthur, and you have mentioned Allen. Are there any others?”

“Yes, actually”, Ashara grinned. “Allyria is the youngest sibling. She is even younger than your brother Benjen, barely ten.”

Ashara felt bad at not talking about Allyria before, but her sister was so much younger than her that sometimes the age difference got in the way. When Allyria was born, it was a strange thing to believe that the tiny baby was her sister, when she had already lived through so much. Allen, Arthur, and, sometimes, even Elia felt more like family to her than the stumbling toddler.

“Where is she?”, Eddard asked curiously.

Even still, Ashara had grown attached to the girl, and soon, the bonds of sisterhood tied them together. Allyria’s absence at Starfall was deeply felt.

“My brother Allen is married to an American woman named Consuelo. When the first bomb dropped in London, Consuelo left to America, and we judged that it would be prudent for her to take Allyria along.”

Ashara had not been kind to Consuelo, then. Consuelo, with her skittishness, always going on and on about “ _How we do things differently back home_ ”, not understanding that Starfall should be her home from now on.

“I have never met someone who went by that name”, Eddard remarked.

“Neither had I. Consuelo is a unique specimen.”

Eddard chuckled, as did Ashara, and any self-consciousness about speaking ill of her brother’s wife was brushed aside when Eddard next spoke.

"Your brothers ultimately trusted their livelihoods to you.”

Ashara believed that she heard admiration when he said that.

“They did”, she replied proudly. They had not entrusted the family business to hired agents, not to Consuelo, not to Doran Martell, but to her, a girl who had been yet waiting for her true life to begin.

“Good for them”, Eddard answered just as he opened the door for the pub she had suggested they went into. As she brushed past him to go into the establishment, the bell that signaled that new customers were arriving rang above her head, and she realized she had heard something akin to respect when Eddard spoke. Ashara stored away the little bit of happiness that she felt then throughout the whole day.

They sat at a table by the window. Ashara ordered scotch and Eddard went for a beer.

“I thought you did not drink”, she said half-accusingly, half-jokingly.

“I do not”, he replied, nonplussed. “Not usually.”

“Why ever not?”

He took a sip of his beer, and she knew that it probably tasted cheap. She absolutely hated cheap beer, but he did not seem to be too bothered by it.

“Because I have seen what drinking does to a man, and I did not like it.”

He was so unashamedly dull, so comfortably set in his convictions that Ashara had to give him some credit. She could see now that there was nothing ill-mannered about his bluntness, he only did not like to put on airs or pretend to have pomp.

His sincerity, at the end of the day, was worth more than the sweet talk of men who did not share half of his valor.

She sipped her drink.

“Why drink now, then?”

Ashara did not mean to shame him into not drinking. On the opposite, she had a feeling that the more uninhibited side of him could get along great with her.

Eddard shrugged, but he could not quite come off as casual.

“Life is for living.”

The words hung heavy in the air. Ashara could hear the heated arguments of elderly men in the table next to theirs, but paid them no mind. She resigned herself to staring at Eddard, and he stared back at her, his eyes taking her in. She could not quite put into words what consisted of that moment, but it was definitely not nothing. It was too long, too silent and too sober to pass for nothing.

Eddard broke the spell when he raised his cup of beer to his lips. He did not fool Ashara, she had done that trick too many times and she could still see the red on his upper cheeks.

Ashara was tempted to dismiss his words as corny or inferior, but even she couldn’t deny the fact that they were simply true, and no arguments could be made against them. As she came to that conclusion, an instinct that she had judged dead and buried once again guided her actions – this time, she would not regret them. She would listen to the words, respect them and hold them close to her heart and in her mind.

“I suppose you also do not dance?”

He was in for the ride, she knew; and his honorable, poised, shy hesitation wasn’t going to make her believe otherwise.

“I do not”, he replied in a small voice as his face lost all the severity of an officer. He was looking at her intensely and, at the same time, he seemed to be what he truly was: a boy petrified at the prospect of accepting a girl’s invitation for a dance. She knew he wanted it, though. She saw how he briefly glanced at the phonograph on the opposite corner of the room in anticipation.

“It is unpolite to deny a lady her request”, she said pointedly, trying to make him come out of his shell. She knew that she had her own labyrinth of insecurities to deal with, but, just like her paperwork, she could deal with that later. She could allow herself to be on fire and only look at the ashes afterwards.

He was not so sure.

“Perhaps later?”, he dared to ask, meekly, and suddenly she was so disappointed at his cowardice that she wanted to never see him again.

The conversation went downhill. Eddard tried to make up for his denial, but Ashara couldn’t brush aside the sting of rejection; and so, the few exchanged lines were too cheery to come off as genuine from Eddard’s end and too weirdly intonated to sound elegant on Ashara’s part.

The walk back home was silent. This time, the silence was tense, with more than just one kind of tension between them.

She was too mad to talk. When they finally arrived on the estate, she handed her coat to Penn, who was too wise to say anything beyond “Welcome back, my lady, Captain Stark”.

Ashara rushed back to the library, to distract herself with the mountains of bills she had yet to pay, and, by doing so, she silently dismissed Eddard.

She didn’t care if she was being cruel, not paying him the courtesy of an invitation to dinner or anything of the sort. Her mood had gotten progressively bitterer on the walk back home. She never wanted to hear the name ‘Eddard Stark’ again, not on this lifetime, nor on the next one. In fact, she said a silent prayer so that there wouldn’t be a next life, because she didn't want to meet him there again as well.

She heard a loud knock on the door.

“Yes?”

Penn’s voice boomed across the room. “My lady, Captain Stark wishes to speak to you.”

It cost Ashara’s entire self-control to resist denying the request. The temptation of ordering Penn to pack Eddard’s clothes and send him on his way was too big.

“Well, then”, was the only response she managed not to scream, and even so, Ashara had to breathe deep in order to regain her patience.

She turned her attention back to the bills in front of her, starting to read a tenant’s pleas for paying the rent on the next month, and she heard rather than saw Penn closing the door, accompanied by the sound of Eddard’s unsure footsteps.

He had the nerve to stay there, with his feet rooted to the ground, not saying anything, demanding her full attention.

She did not give him the satisfaction of interrupting her work.

“Yes?”, she pronounced loud and clear, and she heard the threat behind it. Lesser men had run from it, once.

Eddard did not seem to as much as flinch, and Ashara wondered if she was losing her hand at intimidating people with passive aggression.

He stuttered around his words a little. He had probably not been expecting her to be so cold.

“Uh… My lady”, he went back to formal titles, which she found  _funny,_ “I do not wish to cause you any kind of distress.”

“You are not”, she cut him off, emotionlessly. He opened his mouth to retort, but then she dropped her pen with a clunk and fixed him with a deathly stare. “If that is all,  _Captain,_ I would very much like to go back to my responsibilities, as I am sure you will understand.”

She almost regretted the words when she saw the way he shrunk back, but then his demeanor stiffened again.

“As you wish. Forgive me for taking up so much of your time”, he said, and left.

Ashara immediately turned her attention back to her duties, not permitting herself to think about anything that did not come from a typewriter.

 

When night fell, she warned Penn that she would rather have her meal sent to her in her study. It was a harsh gesture, to leave Eddard to his own devices, dining alone with people he was not socially allowed to chat with; but she couldn’t bring herself to think about it much, lest she realized how immature she was behaving.

Penn revealed to her that Captain Stark had been agitated at his lonely dinner. He had apparently tried to coax Penn and the footmen into a conversation, but, evidently, the staff had not been very talkative to the guest.

“Aurelius and Ronald took pity on him, my lady”, Penn told her, and she was not a fool. She knew that he meant to say,  _and I did as well,_ but was too loyal to do so.

She knew she could trust Penn. She could ask him things she was not very comfortable in discussing, and he would understand.

“How did he look, Penn?”, she asked more softly.

Her ire was draining away, and a timid concern started to establish itself in her conscience.

“Frankly, my lady, he looked too beaten down to even speak properly”, Penn said in a neutral tone. Ashara had been Penn’s favorite ever since she was a toddler, and she knew that he said things beyond his words sometimes.

 _‘You hurt him, and I would like to know why’_  was what he truly said.

There was no danger in talking to her oldest friend (for he was so, even if they did not state it).

“We had a… disagreement, earlier in the afternoon.”

“I suppose the gentleman was rude?”, Penn speculated.

“No, no, he was not”, Ashara had to give him that, “I only got mad at something he didn’t do.”

“And did you wish he had?”, the butler asked knowingly.

He knew too much about her life already.

“Yes”, she confessed, feeling herself burn in embarrassment. All her anger from before dissipated at the sight of Penn’s compassionate gaze. Ashara didn’t think she deserved the sympathy he had for her. “You must think I am a fool.”

“Never, my lady”, he had a smile in his voice as he poured tea for her. “The Captain is not the type of gentlemen whose acquaintance you are used to. It would only be natural for you to clash.”

“What is the type of gentleman I am used to?” Ashara asked curiously.

“Well, my lady, I do not think that any man could ever deserve you.”

She smirked. Penn really knew how to talk his way out of a situation.

The butler went to the door, but, peculiarly, he halted on the middle of the way. Ashara sensed some level of hesitation on the butler, but he still turned to speak.

“If I may remind you so, my lady, Captain Stark’s time on leave is not unlimited. Soon, he will go back to the front, and the Lord knows if he will return from there. Tell him what is in your heart, my lady, and you will not regret it for a lifetime.”  

Her eyes widened in surprise, and then Penn excused himself.

This time, the silence in the library was deafening and unbearable.

After fifteen minutes of anguish, she rang her bell, Penn came back and she asked for him to fetch Captain Stark.

The Captain had an unreadable expression on his face.

Ashara felt like all her experience with the upper circles of society failed to prepare her for that monumental moment.

She had a feeling in her gut that she would remember this specific moment for the rest of her years, and her stomach went cold.

She decided to drop all pretenses. It was what Eddard did all the time.

“I treated you very poorly”, she started, unable to avoid fidgeting, “and I would like to apologize.”

It was impossible to look at his face. She would vanish into thin air if she did.

“There is nothing to forgive”, he said, and she chanced a look at him. “You had the kindness to take me in your house and give me attention and… care.”

“No”, she said firmly. “Arthur invited you to stay here. You are his friend. I should have been more considerate.”

His face dissolved into a sly smile. He had a knowing look in his eyes (did he know anything about her at all?) that conveyed a feeling which Ashara did not know the words to describe. If she squinted, she could call it wise and wistful. One thing was certain, though: there was no innocence there.

Ashara was left to wonder as to how Eddard had aged so much. Even though they were roughly of the same age, he looked as if he had aged twenty years in that moment.

He looked around her.

He was so quiet.

“I would like to mend our friendship”, he stated. “Perhaps with that dance I owe you?”

Ashara’s heart had not raced at invitations in  _years._ Not since she was fifteen. By nineteen, she had been convinced that that was a phenomenon which only happened in one’s early life; and yet, here she was again, with her sweaty palms.

She smiled quietly, nodding her head.

She went to Allen’s gramophone, left to dust by the window. She picked up one of Consuelo’s vinyl discs, not even managing to read the title of the songs. Ashara only knew that Consuelo liked crying, melodramatic singers, and half-heartedly hoped that the song would not be  _too_  embarrassing.

The needle started to scratch the disc, and she turned to Eddard.

She was not ready to let him hold her just yet.

As the disc started to play a soft melody, Ashara made a beeline for the drink tray instead.

“A glass of water?” She raised her voice to talk to him from afar, so she was nearly frightened when she heard him murmur right behind her.

“Whisky.”

Eddard’s voice was husky.

From water, to beer, to whisky. Elia was right, she really was a bad influence.

She poured the drink for the two of them. When she handed him his cup, she did wide, circular motions, in order to hide her slightly shaking hands.

“Do you like it?” Ashara asked him, observing his every reaction to the drink.

“It is not bad”, Eddard conceded, “but it is not something that I would drink on a daily basis.”

It was easier to smile now that he had given her the opportunity.

She fully consciously beamed at him. “It is not fancy enough?”

He smiled crookedly, eyes twinkling.

“On the contrary, I think it is too fancy.”

She smirked.

The singer was telling the story of when her husband cheated on her at a party whilst she was playing the piano.

Eddard set down his drink.

Resolutely.

He gave two steps backwards, away from the table.

Ashara followed him, eagerly, as a moth flies into the light.

He opened his arms wide, and she held onto one of his hands. She was not wearing her old pair of gloves, this time, she could feel his skin on hers. August 1914 had come.

They fit into each other – he held her waist, she held his shoulder, she had her face against his neck, and his body close to hers.

Hesitantly, slowly, he started to move his feet.

Those were the simplest of dance moves. She had danced more elaborate and complex choreographies before, but they did not hold the same relevance as this modest routine.

“I do not dance”, he tried to explain himself, just as the sound of a violin overtook the gloomy singer.

“Not even in Paris?” She tried to tease him again. It was easier this way. By means of teasing, she could even allow herself to ignore the fact that she was literally breathing the same air as he was.

“No. No had ever asked me to”, Eddard confessed, and he lowered his head, forming a strange angle in which his lips were almost against her hair.

They had finally found their rhythm, without even noticing.

“How strange”, Ashara muttered after a while.

“What?” He did not sound fully awake.

“You say life is for living”, she pulled away, to look at his face, “but you do not dance with girls, not even with the ones who like you.”

She felt it when his breath failed.

“I am now”, he retorted, mouth agape, just as his hold tightened on her waist, his body failing to accompany the shift in the rhythm of the song.

The violin was joined by many more in a breath-taking crescendo.

“Yes, you are”, she acknowledged, “is that why you drank the whisky? Because you think that there is no time to waste?”

He squeezed the words out of his mouth. Her gaze dropped to his lips.

“There is a time and place for everything”, his stare turned to the window, where she had spoken her name on the previous night, where she had listened to him tell her his own.

“You always know what to say”, she observed.

“Not at all.”

She chuckled sadly. “Are you married, Captain?”, she idly wondered. Most men were, or had been.

“No. But I am engaged to someone”, he admitted.

Ashara snorted. Of course he was.

“Do you love her? Your fiancée?” As if it needed clarification.

“No”, Eddard confessed, as someone would confess a sin. “I do not even know her.”

“What? Why are you getting married to her, then?”

She stopped dancing, disentangling her body from his.

He looked at a loss of what to say or do.

“My father arranged the marriage with her father, Lord Tully. I promised to marry her. It seemed like the right thing to do… My father was her father’s heir. He was going to inherit their entail upon the occasion of Lord Tully’s death, so it seemed only fair for the Lady Catelyn to inherit what was her birthright in the first place. I do wish the law was different, and she would get her inheritance in spite of her gender, but now that my father has passed away and I am the heir, I will not stand by and receive her fortune without at least sharing it with her.”

Ashara did not know why, but her eyes watered up.

“You could refuse the inheritance.”

“I could”, Eddard conceded, regretfully, “but I have made a promise.”

“Your father is dead”, she said bluntly, feeling a lump in her throat, “let the dead bury the dead.”

He spoke so much of tradition holding back progress, and yet he was the one who clang to promises made to dead men, he was the one who allowed himself to be sold in the name of family security.

Eddard’s face softened, and he came close to her again, stroking her hair as if she were a little girl. She knew then that what she felt was reciprocated, but, at the same time, nothing could ever come out of mere feelings.

“He is, but the promise is not.”

Ashara turned away from him, taking the vinyl off the gramophone.

It was the end of their waltz.

“I loved my father”, she started, feeling her body come to life with rage and pride, “but if he ever tried to sell me off, like some object or cattle, I would kick and scream. I would run away. I would never come back.  _I am not a thing._ ”

“That is why you deserve better than me.”

 _No, I do not,_ Ashara wanted to say,  _you are what I deserve._

At least he lay his cards on the table.

“But life is for living”, she said, desperately clinging to hope. At this point, she wanted anything from him. If she could not have his tomorrows, she wanted at least his midnight. She wanted his whisky, his unashamed dancing, his feelings. Let the other woman have everything else.

He looked at her, mildly disappointed for her asking him this, but ultimately understanding and completely devastated at not being able to do the things he wanted to do.

Eddard traced the outline of Ashara’s upper cheek, breathing heavily.

He would leave the library later. He would leave Starfall.

For a tiny moment, though, he did not.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for the huge delay! Hopefully this big chapter will be a compensation :D  
> Thanks everyone for reading and commenting, I love you <3


	3. Bridges

_Paris, France, 1917._

_Ashara,_

_I am ever so fortunate to have you as my friend. Your constant worry for my family’s well-being, as well as my own, has warmed my heart, but I must advise you not to worry too much. My husband and the consulate have arranged my return to England, and I should be stepping on British soil soon._

_I am safe, my dearest friend, and the child within my womb is too. I have been blessed with His light, and now there is another life to come. I cannot wait to meet him or her. Rhaenys also speaks of her sibling with such fondness and excitement that I am immediately relieved to know that the babe will have a good relationship with their sister._

_Speaking of which: have you had any news of your brothers? My own Oberyn, as you pointed out, is not a faithful correspondent, but I am glad to inform you that he is apparently fighting fit, although he has not communicated me of his current location. As an officer of the Royal Air Force, I expect that this is a common procedure. As for Doran, you probably have more contact with him than I do. I know that your duties prevent you from visiting each other often (you’are both incredibly hectic individuals), but I am pleased to know that you make an effort to stay in touch. I miss him dearly._

_Your description of this Captain Stark has captured my attention. Judging from what you have written, he sounds like a good man. Good men are hard to find._

_I ask you to try to understand him. I do not need to meet the man in person to deduce that you are different from one another, and this has been reason enough for you to dismiss people in the past, but I plead for you not to be put off by those divergences. These are lonely times, but your nature is not one of a lonely person._

_Do not be deterred by what has happened in the past or by superfluous matters. You have such possibilities, my friend, it would be foolish to waste those. I know you have kept yourself locked away, but perhaps it is time for you to build bridges instead of walls._

_“Give, and you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full — pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, running over, and poured into your lap. The amount you give will determine the amount you get back.” – Luke 6:38._

_Yours,_

_Elia Martell._

Ashara kept staring blankly at the ceiling. The rain was pouring down heavily, and the weight of her coverlets was making her feel as if she had been compressed in a matchbox.

How good would that be.

When Ashara was lying down, comfortable among lacy bedspreads, she could almost forget the burden that she was carrying on her shoulders. It was fairly easy to pretend that she was still a child, living a simpler life dictated by the going up and down of the sun, but then she reasoned that there was never such a life, and things were never simpler.

She was better off now, even if the road was tough. She refused to even consider going back to her former self. That simply was not an option anymore.

Ashara could repeat a million mantras that people exclaimed about how “ _With age, comes wisdom_ ”, but the truth was that she did not have all the answers she had thought she would have at that point in her life. She looked at her jewellery and found them devoid of any meaning, she looked at herself and knew in her core that she was not much wiser or smarter or kinder than she was when just a girl.

That whole generation was still the same, living just as their parents had lived. Why did they fool themselves with their false bravado was beyond Ashara’s understanding.

How could she define herself, when she had been transformed so many times over the passing of the years? How could she cite certain adjectives as being expressive of her essence, when she was challenged to confront her beliefs about herself nearly every day?

She was everything she thought she was, until she was not any longer. Maybe it could be said that she was growing up at last, but the feeling of loss was stronger than any notion of gained knowledge.

The only thing she was sure about now was her ability to wake up, day after day. It may not seem like much, but it truly was.

Ashara rose from her worst disasters.

She turned.

She changed.

 

“Good morning, Penn”, Ashara said absent-mindedly, fixing her elbow-length gloves. “Tell me the news. Have you got any letters from my sister?”

She expected to hear an answer, but then there was silence.

She turned around to look at the butler. He was gazing at her timidly, compassionately, sadly.

“What is it, Penn?”, Ashara asked,  betraying her fear.

Penn soldiered on.

“My lady… I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I feel it is my duty to inform you that…”

He clenched his fists, Ashara did not miss it.

“The village hospital has received new soldiers who have arrived from the front. Captain Stark is among them.”

Ashara’s knees went immediately weak, and she had to seek out a chair to hold on to.

The blow was hard, and she had to close her eyes to prevent herself from being dizzy.

Penn held out a glass of water for her.

“Here, my lady”, he stressed, his voice almost a fatherly caress. “I thought you would have liked to know.”

“You were right, this has only caught me off-guard”, she replied, a shiver running through her spine. “Please ask Wylla to collect my coat. Wren will have to prepare a bundle of clean clothes for the Captain. Tell Mr. Shane to bring the car around. I am going to the hospital at once.”

“Yes, my lady.”

The ride was excruciatingly slow. Every second seemed to take three more to go, and the pointer of her pocket watch was advancing sadistically and without any haste whatsoever.

When they finally arrived, Ashara almost jumped out of the vehicle, walking fast through the throng of people.

“Excuse me”, she said to the receptionist, a girl with bags under her eyes. “I am here to see someone, they told me he is here, can you please tell me where I can find him?”

The girl pulled out a gigantic list of names, and fixed her glasses to better look at it.

Ashara was scared of assimilating the names with actual people, especially the ones risked off with red ink.

The likelihood of his name being one of those did not even cross her mind.

“What is his name?”

“Stark. Eddard Stark.”

“Rank?”

“Captain.”

The girl’s tiny hands perused the list, and finally came to a halt.

(It did noy carry the scarlet mark.)

The girl set down the list, and looked at Ashara with wide eyes, giving her the same look she had received from Penn earlier that day.

“Third floor, fourth bed from left to right.”

Ashara was about to thank her, but then the girl spoke again.

“You should wait before going upstairs to meet him, my lady. He isn’t… we are short of staff, we have been dealing with far too many patients, and he’s… he hasn’t been cleaned yet.”

Ashara did not have the time to reply.

She stormed off, the stale air asphyxiating her, deeper into the circles of hell.

The only thing that stopped her from fainting at the sight of Eddard was the understanding that he needed her. She would have to be strong for him, she told herself.

With a will of steel, she approached the nurses and asked for soap, towels and a water basin. They did not have the time to put up a dispute on whether or not she was technically prepared for the task.

Ashara dared to come close to him, appraising his condition.

He was unconscious. She put her hands on his neck to feel his pulse and was comforted to find it steady, but his breath was feeble.

Ashara rolled her sleeves up to her elbows. She carefully unbuttoned his uniform and ridded him of his shirt.

She flinched at the sight of blood, but did not linger on her fright for long.

She watered the towel and grabbed the soap, bringing them to Eddard’s chest.

The blood was almost dry now, sticking to his chest hair. Ashara carefully cleaned him, until the dirt was gone, revealing where were the bruises.  

Those were mostly just scrapes. She had an idea that they had been caused by shards of glass from the artillery.

“My darling…” she whispered when his body twisted at her touch. She moved up, holding his head securely on her hands. “Can you hear me?”

No answer came back. His beautiful face was contorted in pain, and she strengthened her hold on him, feeling closer to him than ever before.

“You do not have to worry now. You are safe and in good hands”, she spoke softly on his ear, brushing a strand of his hair behind his ear. “Everything will be fine now; I am taking care of you. You are not alone anymore.”

 Ashara wasn’t sure that Eddard could hear her in his feverish state, but she kept on stroking his dirty hair until she felt his breath become even.

She went back to her task. She cleaned his torso, arms, armpits, hands, nails, neck, face and hair, then she dried his skin and dressed him with the shirt Wren had set out for him.

She thought twice before taking off his pants, but she did anyway. His health was her priority, and she could give up her modesty if it meant that he could get better.

Ashara found a bigger, uglier wound on his leg. It had been taken care of during the trip to the hospital, a temporary tourniquet keeping the blood from further flowing out of his body.

This part was out of her jurisdiction, so she stuck to cleaning his lower body parts.

He had urinated on his pants. His underwear was stinking with sweat, piss and blood. There was also a good amount of mud on his legs and hair, as well as pieces of debris.

Her heart sank when she realized what he had been through, how truly hideous his journey had been. Suddenly her mind was filled with images of his ordeals, and she thanked the Lord for bringing him back out of that torture.  

“Everything is alright”, she cooed when washing his thighs.

 When Ashara was done with washing and dressing him, she rubbed his feet and was gratified to realize that his fever was already giving in.

“I am going to fetch a doctor to check on you. I’ll be back soon”, she told him on his bedside, caressing his hair, turning away to go…

Suddenly his hand went up and grabbed her wrist, and she could not contain a loud gasp.

“Ned! You are awake!”

Ashara was quick to hug him against her chest in a desperate embrace, threading her fingers through his hair strands.  

“Ashara?”, he managed to voice, even with the hoarseness of his tone. She was surprised to notice he could even say that, given the long time in which he had been asleep. His face was pale, and there was no strength left in his body.

Ashara managed to get him to lie back down, so as not to exert himself. She handed him a glass of water to clean his mouth, which smelt of sickness.

“Where am I? What happened?”

His eyes were roaming the place and she sensed that he wished to get up off the bed, which could not happen no matter what.

She held his hand, felt his fingers intertwining with her own.

“You should be still. Do not fret, you are safe now, I promise. You were wounded, but now…”

“Wounded?”

Eddard tried to get up, and so Ashara hugged him and did not let go of him.

“Trust me. You are safe now. You are not in France, you are in Starfall, way back in England”, she told him assertively. “You have to lie down.”

His breath was fast and his blood pressure had no doubt gone down. He could not be frantic right now.

“Am I safe?” He asked her back, trying to be calm.

“Yes. Now lie down, my darling. You cannot strain yourself for nothing. You have to rest…”

He took a few moments to truly comprehend where he was. It was too big of a shock, waking up in safety after a real nightmare.  

He eventually settled back, but he did not want to let go of her hand just yet.

“Do not leave me alone”, he pleaded, still afraid.

Ashara cursed the war for reducing that sturdy gentleman she had met into a vulnerable man, too scared of being alone.

Of course she excused his clinging. Were the situation any different, he would not have to act like that, not at all.

She gently kissed his forehead, to assure him.

“I will be back in a moment. The doctor has to check on you.”

“Just stay here for a moment. Just a moment. Then you go.”

Her resolve cracked at his pleading.

“Very well.”

She sat by his bedside. He reached for her, holding on to her middle like a little boy. She caressed his back, stroked his hair, and he held her hand, taking comfort in her arms.

She stayed with him until he calmed down, for as long as he needed her to be there.

“I have to go now”, Ashara said delicately. “It will only be a moment.”

“Please get back”, Eddard asked when she moved to kiss his forehead.

“Always”, she nodded.  

A couple of hours later, after the doctor looked at Eddard and determined that, although he had lost blood and broken his leg, he was out of greater danger, Ashara was still by his side, rubbing his back when he bended down to retch in a bowl.

“Everything is alright”, Ashara kept saying.

When Eddard fell down hard against his pillows again, Ashara gave him water again, cleaned his face and changed his sheets.

She started to notice how reality was hitting him. He was deeply embarrassed at having to be in that position, but she could not care less about it.

She had never loved him more than at that day, when she had to deal with his most intimate needs. She would not renounce that task, not now, not ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I rise from my worst disasters, I turn, I change" - Virginia Woolf, The Waves. 
> 
>  
> 
> I'm sorry for the looooooooooooooooooong wait. Life got real hard this time. Who could have known that living on my own would be so difficult?? Gee I'm surprised  
> This chapter should have been longer, but I figured that it would be best to post a short chapter like this one instead of making you wait extra time hah. The next chapter, though, will be BIG. THERE'S SO MUCH TO HAPPEN YET. YOU HAVE NO IDEA. As such, it will take a bit of time, but I think I'll be done with it in two weeks from now.  
> Love you all!! Hope you've been doing fine!! <3 <3 <3


	4. Compassion

The train came to a shuddering halt. Ashara looked through the window in hopes to recognize the station, but the night was dark and the mist emanating from the machinery shrouded the express.

“We have arrived, my lady”, Ashara’s lady maid, Wylla, told her, after returning to the cabin.

“Thank you for warning me, Wylla”, Ashara acknowledged the woman, as Wylla started to gather their luggage.

They got off the train and on to the platform; the many passengers were rushing off into the night. Wylla’s eyes were fleeting across the multitude of faces, while Ashara’s were fixed on the distance, her stare sure of itself, her footsteps certain.

“My lady, should I call the hotel? Or perhaps, one of your friends’ homes?”

Wylla was baffled. In all her years of servitude to the family, she had endured the younger Daynes’ antics with serenity, but then her mistress had never called for her in the middle of the night and ordered her to pack up their clothes for a long-distance trip quite so abruptly and without previous notice.

One of the new maids had dared to sneer at the impromptu trip, saying that Her Ladyship was probably eloping and that London was just a rendezvous point on the way to Gretna Green. Mr Penn had heard the unfortunate comment and publicly scolded the insolent maid, much to Wylla’s delight. The maid had blushed at the loud admonishment and then meekly apologized.

Wylla knew that the girl was young and foolish, messing around with themes which should be regarded with the utmost respect. The youth, the sweet summer children did not have the same sense of honour and respect that Wylla’s generation so proudly displayed, but Wylla supposed that they would eventually learn.

Time would rob them of their cheeky grins and give them humble compliances in return.

Wylla had certainly learned her lesson. Past were the days in which she scoffed at her elders’ ways and laughed at their manners.

When her belly got swollen not once, but twice, and every door was shut to her, the Daynes welcomed her in their house and gave her the opportunity to start anew; their every kindness making its way into Wylla’s loyalties, so different from the people who claimed to be in charge of progress but did not do an ounce of good to those truly in need.

 Wylla also knew that the Her Ladyship was no Venus. Behind the astounding good looks, behind the charm and the wit, she was a woman with needs like any other woman’s. Wylla knew everything about Lady Ashara, from her waist measurements to her monthly cycle, from her favourite hairstyles to her worst heartbreaks.

Lady Ashara was not only a gentle mistress, she was also a dear friend, and Wylla was glad that out of all the conceited ladies in society, she got to serve one with a generous heart.

That did not mean that Wylla understood all the motivations behind Her Ladyship’s actions. It was still uncertain to Wylla as to why they were there at King’s Cross instead of Starfall.

Lady Ashara started to explain their situation, not insensible to Wylla’s doubts.

“Penn arranged for a chauffeur to meet us on my request. The gentleman will then take us to the Brown Hotel, where you and I will therefore spend the night.”

Wylla sent a look of confusion on her mistress’s way.

“Spend the night? My lady, you must forgive the lack of clarity on my behalf, but I thought that you intended to spend the Season here at London…”

“You must not apologize, Wylla. I did not state my intentions to you at any moment, nor was I articulate when I told you to pack up our cases. We have come to London with only one purpose.”

“And what consists of said purpose, my lady?”

Lady Ashara’s firmness did not falter through her answers.

“To find a man”, Ashara replied. “His name is Stark.”

Wylla blinked.

It was no secret amongst the servants that Her Ladyship cultivated some sort of treasured friendship with the good captain, and they all sympathized with his cause, his honesty serving as a breath of fresh air to people used to dealing with guests who did not share half of his valour and yet behaved with the double of his pomp.

The whole staff helped to take care of him, in whatever ways they could.

Wylla could swear that the man was back at their home, laying down on what could very possibly be his deathbed.

Did Lady Ashara believe in some sort of misunderstanding?

“Captain Stark is bed-ridden at Starfall, my lady. He has been ill for several days now. He has not possibly gone to anywhere”, Wylla retorted incredulously.

Lady Ashara’s shoulders repressed a flinch at the mention of Captain Stark’s state. Wylla wondered at how much Her Ladyship had matured, for it had not been too long since Wylla had seen her giving in and crying at her mirror when Captain Stark left for the first time (Wylla remembered running her hands along Lady Ashara’s shoulders to calm her down and whispering, “ _There is still a way for you and him_ ”), and now her mistress was braving the storm.

“The man you are referring to is Captain Eddard Stark. The man we have come to meet here is his brother, Benjen.”

 

 

Allen Dayne was a family man more than anything else. His family was the core of his entire existence, for his loved ones were the pillars in which he sought support just as much as they were the ones he strived to care for.

In many ways, Allen, whose greater assets were the simple dignity and firm poise inherited from his father, was the son who turned out the most like the old Lord Dayne. Arthur was too bold for their father’s tastes, Ashara was too much of a rebel for anyone’s sensitivities and Allyria was still too sweet a girl. Of course, his siblings’ eccentricities were not causes of distress to Allen: if anything, he loved them even more because of their different ways to face life.

And it was not as if Allen did not have a bit of his siblings’ defiant attributes. Freedom to act, think and feel was a common trait among them. A proof of it was his marriage to Consuelo.

Consuelo was not exactly the dollar princess everyone seemed to believe she was. She was the daughter of immigrant Mexican small hotel owners, and as such, had had a vastly different upbringing than most of the people Allen knew in the upper circles. Consuelo was used to working in exchange for money, but the difference between her and most of the English working class was that she actually got to socially ascend with the fruits of her labour.

She had started off helping her parents in the hotel maintenance, and then when her family managed to gather enough money, they paid for their daughter’s education.

It was at that moment in Consuelo’s life that Allen had met her. He was surprised to hear that a woman had been admitted into the prestigious college, in the Mathematics department no less, and was even more amazed when he got to meet her in person and hear her story. Allen was not afraid to admit that Consuelo was his best in intellectual matters, but he was content to say that he was her equal in regards to everything else.

It was only natural that Consuelo had faced a certain difficulty in adjusting to the rich life in the English countryside, for it bore little resemblance to the agitated life in New York City. What was expected of her varied wildly from one side of the Atlantic Sea to the other, and meeting those two sets of expectations proved to be too stressful an effort.

Consuelo had not gotten along with Ashara, at least not initially. It was not the case that the two women hated each other, rather than a lack of understanding on both ends, which Allen later attributed to them both being so young and close-minded upon first contact.

Consuelo’s friendship with Allyria was a much closer one. When the war broke out and Consuelo took Allyria with her to her old home in NYC, they actually took the time to know and grow closer to one another, an endeavour that Ashara had never really pursued.

Allen hoped that Ashara would not be so dismissive of Consuelo now that his wife was coming back from America with Allyria in tow.

Allen hoped for many things.

As any gentleman turned officer, he had seen unspeakable horrors and experienced a reality filled with endless misery. Those experiences changed Allen profoundly and irrevocably, but there was within him an eager desire to recreate happier times and leave all desolation in the past.

He longed to meet his family again, in times of peace at last.

The war was not over quite yet, but there were reasons for many to believe that it would be ended soon. 1918 was coming to a close and there was finally cause for hope after so many years of anguish.

His time on leave would very possibly coincide with the end of it all, so Allen was decided to make the most of it and go back to his family already: now that he was back at his home in Starfall after months of exile on the Western Front, he was bewildered to see the unlikely scenario unfolding before his very eyes.

His sister, Penn the butler had informed him, had left to London, leaving behind a strange officer confined to his bed and about six angry Army officers calling that very same, unconscious Captain a murderer.

 

 

Ashara walked into the dirtiest, most repugnant public house in the whole of London and asked the waiter for a glass of scotch.

All the men in the room were instantly staring at her, giving her predatory looks which would have made a less hell-bent woman probably leave without looking back.

The way they looked at her made Ashara sick to her stomach, but she kept her intentions close to mind and faced them down, swallowing the dubious scotch for good measure, in only one gulp.

“Which one of you is Benjen Stark?” Ashara asked aloud.

They all recoiled and sent looks around, the sound of whispers reverberating through the bar like the noise of rustling leaves of grass.

A boy finally stood up.

“Aye”, Benjen said, his northern accent immediately reminding Ashara of his brother’s.

“May I talk to you in private, please, sir?”

When Benjen nodded once, the drunkards around him whistled and clapped, much to Ashara’s revulsion.

“I do not believe we have been introduced yet”, Benjen said quite courteously and certainly unexpectedly, judging by the company he surrounded himself with.

“We have not”, Ashara agreed, going for the hand-shake instead of the bow. “I am Lady Ashara Dayne of Starfall, a friend of your brother, Captain Eddard Stark.”

“May I ask how you came to meet my brother’s acquaintance?”

“You may. Captain Stark came to know my brother, Lieutenant Arthur Dayne, on the front. It was 1916 when my brother suggested that Captain Stark should spend his time on leave in Starfall, and your brother’s acceptance of such an offer led to my meeting him. About two weeks ago, your brother was shipped off to a hospital close to Starfall. I took notice of his condition and then made arrangements for him to be accommodated in my house, as an esteemed guest required. Now, I have come here to meet you and inform you of your brother’s health. We once believed he was out of danger, but I regret to inform you that this is no longer the case… an infection has confined him to bed and a bad fever has made him unconscious. In his feverish state, he has said many things that he probably would not have said otherwise. He has called for many names. That is why I am here.”

Benjen’s expression was very aggravated, and when his face lost all colour Ashara could see that he was just a boy.

“How did you find me?”, Benjen asked, in negation of her tale.

“I have my sources”, Ashara admitted with no regrets. England was too small an island. “Please, Mr. Stark, you have to come back with me to Starfall. Ask your siblings to come along with us, please. Your brother…”

“My siblings?”, Benjen repeated in utter disbelief. “My lady, your sources have neglected to tell you about my siblings’ deaths.”

It was Ashara’s turn to be puzzled.

A man told the names of the ones close to his heart, even when they were long gone and the hurt behind the callings made them sound more like confessions.

Benjen recalled everything.

“First it was Lyanna. Lord Rickard Stark, my father, sent Lyanna away to France, where she was supposed to spend a summer and then come back to marry a friend of the family, but she never did return from France. Just as every girl of her age, Lyanna believed that getting married to someone that she did not love was an injustice… she met a man who fed her mind with many sorts of dangerous ideas, which, to her, I reckon, must have seemed like a way out. It was not long before the war broke out and the way to France was barred. Brandon, my eldest brother, travelled there to bring Lyanna back to safety, but he never managed to find her. He was killed by German bombings before he could finish his search. My father had a stroke when he heard the news of Brandon’s death, and passed away as well. My other brother, whom you have already met, was serving in the Army at the time. He wrote to me saying that he found out about Lyanna’s fate, that by the time he arrived, it was already too late. He found her on her deathbed in an abandoned cottage. She was naked and with child.”

Ashara had only silence to confront Benjen’s misfortunes with. It was unladylike to cry, but it was also vulgar to meet sorrow with indifference. She found a balance by squeezing Benjen’s hand, when her eyes were stinging with tears.

“I have no words…”

“Please, my lady… Ned cannot die. He is everything I have left”, Benjen’s voice broke out and Ashara almost hugged him. She felt a motherly impulse to comfort the boy, still so very young and already so lost.

“He will not die”, Ashara spoke, her violet eyes penetrating into Benjen’s grey ones, “but you do have to come with me.”

 

 

“Penn, I fear that it is my duty to make a few inquiries”, Allen remarked almost casually.

“Very well, my lord”, Penn agreed with a single bow of his head. “Shall I ask the cook to prepare hors d’oeuvres for your afternoon tea?”

“Thank you, but that will not be necessary, as the presence of the Army gentlemen makes this a matter of the highest urgency. It would do me good to begin by addressing the elephant in the room, that is, the identity of the man whom my employees took to tending under my roof.” 

Penn maintained his unwavering composure throughout the whole duration of the unconventional interrogation.

“Well, my lord, as far as my knowledge extends itself, that man is a guest of your siblings. Captain Stark is a comrade in arms to your brother and by extension a friend of your sister. His first stay in Starfall happened in 1916, at Sir Arthur’s invitation, and then his return happened about two weeks ago, when the Captain was wounded on the front and brought to a nearby hospital. Lady Ashara was reminded of their original encounter and arranged for the Captain to be brought to Starfall for a better recovery.”

Allen took notice of the way Penn attempted to disguise his affection for Ashara when he spoke, but it was all to no avail. Allen had always known that his sister was the butler’s favourite.

Allen also knew that Penn cared for every Dayne children, regardless of them being well grown-up adults by now.

“Penn, I would like you to be mindful of how much I appreciate your candour. I certainly trust your judgment, and am now going to ask you a question that requires an honest opinion.”

“I am glad to be helpful, my lord, and humbled by your faith in me.”

Allen smiled briefly, and after a pause, asked the question that would determine his actions.

“Is the Captain a good man?”

Although Penn was pensive for a moment, the seconds that he took to formulate his answer only added effect to its substance.

“Absolutely.”

Allen breathed a sigh of relief.

“Is his relationship with my siblings honest?”

Penn knew what questions Allen wanted to inquire after, and it was his duty to pass the needed information to his master.

“After the war started and you and Sir Arthur left with the Army, along with Lady Consuelo leaving with Lady Allyria, on top of Lady Elia Martell’s absence and Prince Oberyn’s vanishing, it is safe to affirm that Lady Ashara’s routine was devoted entirely to the managing of the estate, and her hours were spent mostly in Starfall, with little to none visitations whatsoever. When Captain Stark arrived in 1916, Lady Ashara wore the dresses that she had not worn ever since her Season, asked the cook to prepare her finest dishes and did not ask me to fetch extra liquor from the cellar.”

“I know that it is not your place to tell, but what I ask I do for my family’s good fortune. Do you personally believe that Captain Stark may have been the reason for her change?”

Penn’s jugular vein popped out, but he convinced himself that he was doing Her Ladyship a favour by speaking openly.

“I do believe so, yes. That is the main reason of my vocal defence of Captain Stark. When he was wounded, Lady Ashara mobilized our household to care to the Captain’s needs, and she was no exception to the effort. Now she has gone off to London, to find the names he whispered in his delirium, in the hopes of providing him with a final consolation.”

Allen was touched to hear that the Captain was good to his sister, but murder was still a strong word which weighed heavily upon one’s judgment.

“And as for these murder accusations?”

“Of those I could not possibly speak for. In fact, I had never heard of such allegations before, and was as stunned as anyone when I heard what was entailed in those gentlemen’s intents here.”

“But you do have a natural propensity toward Captain Stark’s cause, I presume.”

“That is because I came to know the man, while I cannot vouch for the officers that are accusing him.”

“Thank you, Penn”, Allen said with a heartfelt tone. “Your views were very enlightening, as always. I am truly honoured to have you sharing your concerns with me.”

Penn beamed at His Lordship, bowed, and left.

Allen was left to ruminate alone, another man’s fate in his hands.

 

 

After the frenzy of her search dissolved itself in sobriety, and the intermittent trembling of the train wagon served as a sort of comfort, Ashara was left to alternate her attentions between the ever-changing landscape and Benjen’s studious gaze.

 _What is he looking for?,_ Ashara thought when Benjen kept observing her.

“Do you have feelings for my brother?”, Benjen asked as if on cue.

There was no point in lying to either Benjen or herself.

“I do”, she disclosed the kind of information that she had always kept secretly veiled.

“You do know that if he ever wakes up”, Benjen approached the subject almost coolly now, “he will have to marry another?”

Yes, Ashara had entertained the thought of Eddard’s betrothed for a number of restless nights, and although the woman was nothing to Ashara but an abstract person, if she squinted, Ashara could bring herself to imagine how it must have felt like to be in the woman’s shoes. She could imagine the girl’s doubts in her head, and they sounded like the doubts that she herself nurtured. Ashara wished she could be in that girl’s position, but she could never grow any sort of resentment for the wife-to-be.

Ashara nodded to Benjen.

“I feel sorry for you, my lady”, Benjen sympathized with her, and Ashara found pity in his eyes.

Her skin tingled in the wrong places.

Ashara was not raised to be pitied, she reasoned. The things in her life were not to be belittled, for she had fought her way through her suffering and faced it with dignity.

“I appreciate the sentiment, but then again I have no need for you feeling sorry, Benjen. Getting to know him has brought me joy and I have learned a great deal from him.”

“Looking for the silver lining, you are”, Benjen chuckled silently. “He was a good babe. Never shat his pants.”

That was the crudest thing Ashara had ever heard, and yet she found herself laughing at it, and it was good to laugh. Laughing at the image of that little boy made him more dear to her, even when she was about to lose him forever.

 

 

“My lord, Lady Ashara has arrived”, Penn announced to Lord Dayne, who promptly got up from his place at the settee.

“Excellent”, Allen replied. “See that she comes here immediately.”

“Yes, my lord”, Penn bowed and jogged up to fetch Lady Ashara, who was just coming up the gravel path.

From the backseat of the car, Benjen whistled at the sight of Starfall.

“You have quite the modest house”, Benjen remarked, not unsarcastically.

“Oh Mr. Stark, do close your mouth, please. The drooling is not as fashionable as you would think.”

Benjen drily smiled, and Mr. Shane opened the door to let them out.

Penn uncharacteristically approached Ashara with noticeable worry.

“My lady, welcome back”, he had to say first.

Ashara feared for the worst.

“Cut to the chase, Penn, please.”

Penn did as he was told.

“Lord Dayne has arrived from the front and he requires your immediate presence at his side, to discuss the situation involving Captain Stark. The captain himself is showing signs of a possible recovery, thankfully, but other circumstances have arisen… there are Army gentlemen here at Starfall asking for an audience with the captain.”

“What could they possibly want to bother him with? Do they not know of his condition?”

Ashara walked faster and made sign for Benjen to follow her.

Allen was standing there, awaiting her in the main hall. He opened his arms for her as soon as he saw her, and she went inside his embrace with no hesitation.

“Brother”, she called him, taking solace in his comforting hold. Allen was different than most in that regard, his hugs were never products of courtesy and more of genuine affection, which he always wanted to make explicit. Ashara had forgotten that, she had forgotten how much she needed her brother’s soothing embrace. “How good it is to see you.”

“My dear”, Allen whispered against the crown of her head. He had plenty of topics of a personal nature that he wished to discuss with her, but there were infinitely more pressing matters pending above their heads. “I am afraid that you have much to explain.”

 

 

The officers, after all, were not in Starfall in order to pose a threat to anyone or to gloat. All parties understood the gentlemen’s intents of wanting to make clear after disaster struck.

The body of Sir Gerold Hightower, a much respected officer and brother in arms to both Eddard and Arthur, had been discovered on a windmill in a French field occupied by the enemy forces of Germany and Britain.

Sir Gerold’s party was small and the only known survivors were Eddard Stark and Howland Reed. Eddard Stark was bed-ridden in Starfall, whilst Howland Reed was missing from hospital files.

On the day of the incident, it was reported that two German snipers had been taken down in a nearby explosion caused by a British grenade. What came after the detonation of said grenade was still unclear, but the results were certainly tragic.

Sir Gerold had been found next to a third German soldier. The other few British combatants had died a bit farther from him, in what looked like a massacre brought upon them by the Germans.

Amid the newfound horror, the strange detail came in the shape of a forgotten pistol, left close to Sir Gerold’s body. The size of the injury to his left foot matched the calibre of the pistol.

After searches, it was found that the pistol, an 1887 Webley six-shot model, had been manufactured by the British and actually belonged to Captain Stark.

The same blasting that decimated the other soldiers had been the one to injure Eddard and Howland.

Whatever were their medical conditions, there was a need for accounts and elucidations.

When Eddard finally woke up from his fever, his room was turned into a police station.

He blinked once, twice, trying to put names to all those faces.

The first face that he saw was Ashara’s. She pursed her lips in a thin line when he stared at her, her eyes – once laughing eyes of amethyst colouring – had lost their mirth and now he found other things swimming in her irises, things of an indescribable nature.

He never forgot Lyanna’s wonderings about how “ _the eyes are the windows of the soul_ ”. He had laughed them off, classifying those words as the poems of a young and naïve girl, but he supposed that there was some truth in them, after all.

Ashara was very witty and the verbal sparring he had with her amused him to no end, but her eyes spoke louder in her quietness than any coded manners she had been taught to follow. That was the difference between them: Ashara needed words when Eddard valued silence.

He only needed one glance at her to know everything she never said. The eyes spoke.

“Captain”, she called him, “are you quite alright?”

When he tried to answer her, his throat ached in its drought.

“Here”, she got him a glass of water on his nightstand.

Ashara nervously licked her lips, as if she did not want to tell him what awaited him. Still, she went on.

“Captain, your brother Benjen is here, though now he has gone off to rest. I will fetch him for you, but now… there are gentlemen here to talk to you.”

Eddard instantly knew what they wanted to talk – ask – about, and he consented to it unflinchingly.

After all those years, the paths he had chosen brought him to this moment, when fate was knocking on his door. It was time to answer it and stand his ground.

 A man could lie to the whole world, only to rest against his pillow and tell himself the truth. Eddard was not raised to be that kind of man, a man doomed to live lies. His life was not as dear to him as was his honour.

“Send them in”, he told Ashara, ready to confess his many sins.

“Captain Stark, we want to make it clear that you are not being prosecuted or charged with anything as of yet. You only have to give us your statement on the death of Sir Gerold Hightower.”

 Eddard nodded to the men facing him.

“What happened, Captain?”, a second voice asked him.

Eddard relieved the events of that day in his mind’s eye.

It was an ordinary day. There was inevitable mud and shit and debris everywhere within eyesight.

Sir Gerold had been feeling exceptionally fine that day, probably because he had managed to save extra cigars. Eddard could not judge him for indulging in smoking, with what little happiness they managed to preserve. Far from condemning Gerold for the habit, Eddard looked at it as a way of survival. Gerold saved his cigars in a manner that Eddard assimilated to private rites or hushed prayers. By saving them, he was presuming that he would live to see the light of another day… he kept them in his back pockets, and then smoked them during what could be considered lunch time, if that food even counted as lunch. Gerold lighted the cigarettes and seemed to contemplate his thoughts.

Eddard often wondered at what Gerold thought about. Maybe he was remembering happier times, only allowing himself to think of that when he smoked and the fumes were billowing around him under the fire from the lighter. Maybe he saved the memories like he saved his cigarettes, savouring them in a personal ritual. Whatever Gerold thought about, it seemed important, perhaps more important than Eddard’s own musings.

They had been ordered to go to a windmill, on a simple mission to fetch provisions. A good part of their band, including Lieutenant Dayne, had not been even ordered to go, due to the simplicity of the task. How ironic it was, that, out of all the sombre days anticipating hell, it had descended upon them when least expected.

“Eh Howland, does that bonny lass of yours know of ye eating them frogs?”, one of the men teased Howland when they were marching.

“Aye”, Howland answered. “She rather enjoys it, and so does your mama.”

The men laughed and whistled at it.

Humour always came like a balm to the wounds, regardless of the fact that their band was becoming shorter and shorter with the passing of time and that each day they found fewer themes to joke about. Exhaustion creeped its way into their bones with every passing hour, and the men were becoming more irritable and frustrated. Flashes of humour were precious things to be enjoyed while they lasted.

Suddenly, Gerold halted in his tracks.

“Still”, he ordered his men, and they all drew their weapons.

The bullets started singing in the walls of the windmill. They all got down to the ground, and the three men standing in the front – Eddard, Gerold and Howland – crawled ahead of the party, on the steps of the windmill.

“Give me ammo”, Eddard asked Howland, to which he denied.

“Won’t work out”, Howland quickly figured. Eddard was not that good of a long-distance sniper to catch the shooters. Howland then reached out for a grenade among his weaponry.

He lighted it up and threw it as far as he could.

They covered their ears with their hands and waited for the impact.

One, two, three… it came.

All went black for a moment, all sound was gone.

They opened their eyes again, and the bullet storm had ceased.

With an immense sigh of relief to their chests, they got up from the ground and gathered terrain, but soon, when they got yet closer to the windmill, another bullet sang above their heads.

The three men quickly discovered where it came from and opened fire against it.

The German soldier cried out in agony at being shot at. He fell down to the ground and dropped his weapon away from his grasp. His red-striped cap came off when a spasm overtook his body, and, as he vomited pus and blood, Eddard saw to his horror that the soldier could not have been older than fifteen.

His voice was loud when he cried out, and it became clear to Eddard that it was the voice of a boy who had not yet gone through puberty. The boy cried and wept, his body broken by the world around him, by men far older and more experienced than him…  

The tears furiously trickling down his terrified face caused Eddard to see how afraid the boy was.

When Eddard took one step further to the boy, his head lolled up and Eddard glanced into those tearful eyes. The boy was nothing more than a child, evidently alone and scared, and Eddard cursed whoever had turned a blind eye to a child being deployed overseas to that slaughterhouse.

_He who passes the sentence shall swing the sword._

Lyanna had often entertained herself and her brothers by imagining other people’s daily habits. She told them that the cook’s soft spot for spices was a product of her father’s travels to the British India, wherein he had bought a wide variety of spices for his small daughter, who in turn had grown up to become a cook with a passion for exotic flavours. Lyanna also made up tales about why the chauffeur liked to whistle, it evidently was because his mother did so when she was doing their laundry and he had learned it from her. She also spoke about how the kitchen maid spared the dinner leftovers for the stray dogs that wandered the grounds of the estate, and decided that it was a tradition taught to her by the maid’s eldest brother, who had always liked animals.

Lyanna delighted herself in creating humanities for everyone, and although Eddard never fully picked up on that particular custom, it was hard not to be reminded of her when he looked into that foreign boy’s eyes and listened to his helpless cries.

Suddenly everything that was iron inside of Eddard broke. The flashing memory of Lyanna made him see the humanity in that boy, and consequently his own as well.

He would – could – never take a child’s life; he could never be that man.

Gerold Hightower had been lost in the heat of the moment. Eddard had no doubts that the man would never consciously stand by that atrocity, but in the fleeting instant of recovery after a bullet storm, Gerold had not been able to realize that the enemy was in fact a boy.

When he pointed his gun at the fallen soldier, Eddard shouted at him to stop and through a protective instinct ended up shooting Gerold’s foot by mistake.

His own friend.  

“Damn you, Stark!”, Gerold roared.

“We cannot kill him!”, Eddard yelled, dropping his pistol to the floor. “He is unarmed! He is still a child, look at him!”

Through his own suffering, Gerold really took a look at the boy and realized the truth.

“Damn you, Stark”, he repeated for good measure, although the first thought that crossed his mind was that Eddard had saved both the boy and him. He could never live as a child killer. “Reed, help me up!”

Howland diligently picked him up and carried Gerold’s weight on his shoulders; Eddard did the same for the German boy.

He was sobbing, his body was shaking in Eddard’s hold, he was breathing words in German which Eddard did not understand. He would not stop weeping.

Eddard grabbed the boy’s chin and made him look into his eyes.

“Look at me”, he pleaded, knowing that the boy would not understand a word but even so trying to be gentle. “Safe. You are safe. Not, not going to kill you. Safe.”

“ _Sicher?_ ”, the boy murmured, incredulously.

Even when the German planes came and bombed the terrain surrounding the windmill, taking with them the lives of every person at the place with the exception of Eddard and Howland, long after British troops found the survivors among the massacre and Eddard was shipped back to England, the boy’s eyes remained printed in the back of his mind, where they would burn until the day Ned died.

  

 

Ashara suppressed a gasp when Eddard finished his tale. A deadly silence reigned over the room.

There were no words to confront him with.

One of the Army officers finally broke the stillness.

“Can Private Reed confirm your account?”

“Aye”, Ned said. “He saw everything.”

“Captain Stark, some of us have served with you and we are all aware of your honour in battle. We believe in your word and you will not have to stand trial for your actions. We also lament the loss of your battalion… we wish you a Godspeed recovery, sir.”

Eddard nodded once, and the room was emptied by everyone but Ashara.

She did not know quite what to say.

“I will fetch your brother”, she settled for.

“Ashara”, his voice was raspy. “Come here.”

She obeyed and timidly walked to his bedside. He made sign for her to sit down and she did that.

Ned tentatively grabbed her hand. Ashara opened her palm to him, and felt the roughness of his skin. Those were the hands of someone who had been through many ordeals, and they were very unlike her soft palms, only used to holding paper, lace and china.

Ashara laced their fingers together. Ned caressed the back of her thumb with his fingertips.

They made direct eye contact, and Ashara thought that she finally understood Ned. His life was not about the barriers that people put up to keep other people away. It was not about class, sex, colour, beauty, intelligence or even wit… it was about something more primal and essential.  

Compassion.

“He was just a boy”, Ashara sobbed, and Ned held her against his strong chest. When her sobs died down, they rested their foreheads against one another, saying nothing at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY SO I KNOW THAT I PROMISED TWO WEEKS AND THEN THE TWO WEEKS TURNED INTO TWO MONTHS BUT I HAVE AN EXPLANATION *Runs away from thrown flipflops*  
> I was writing like mad in my vacation but then a number of things happened in my life, the worst of those things being the passing of my dear granny. I did not have the mind or the spirit to keep it up, especially when I came back to the town I'm living in now and got busy with all the madness that is college life. Buuuut then I pulled my stuff together and now I'm posting this chapter for you. Just so you know, it got so big that I had to split it in two, and the next part will be posted this weekend (it's a promise now for real).  
> And how have you guys been? Leave a thought if you have any! :D


	5. Resilience

When the earliest signs of sunlight descended upon the infirmary ward, Ned awoke, and, as ridiculous as that may have sounded, he had a brief moment of absent-mindedness in which he thought that he was still back at Winterfell.

He thought to himself not to make any loud noises, so as not to wake up his family who could be sleeping next to him.

And then the fleeting instant of forgetfulness was crushed by the recollection of where he truly was.

His father was dead. Brandon was dead. Even Lyanna was dead.

The moments of obliviousness were the worst. Having to remember that they were dead was like learning of their passing all over again. They had been dead for years now, and even so had died a thousand times since. The most impressive thing of all was that, for Ned, it did not matter how many times he had to tell himself of their deaths, each time presented the same bittersweet, dull pain that never diminished or went away.

Ned accepted that he would have to carry that sadness with him for the rest of his life. It was only by keeping the sadness close to his heart that he also kept the joy of having loved them. There was death in his sadness, but there was life as well. The memory of what was gone was just as strong as the memory of what had been.

Ned once believed that all those years of happiness and joy by his family’s side had made him who he was, but the truth was that he had become something else. He learned to tell himself things that allowed him to get on with his life. This instinct of survival was not natural; it was something that came with the unexpectedness of waking up with each new day when he thought that he was not capable of doing so. Ned learned how to compose himself like someone sewing a tapestry: he waited, he presented the world with what they needed of him, and then he weaved strands together, strands of love and loss all united... it turned out that refraining himself from suffering also detained him from remembering everything, from his father’s veiled tenderness to Brandon’s laughs and Lyanna’s smiles. Ned could not possibly live without those reminiscences, and so stopped shying away from grief, and though he never felt quite whole again or ever replaced what he had lost, he understood that the painful feelings did not make the joyful ones less special.

There always should be room for happiness. Allowing himself to feel pleasure again, for whatever reason that pleasure came, did not mean that he was betraying the old familiar sorrow that he carried around his shoulders like a mantle. Eddard pondered that love presented itself in his life in many ways, be it on a son’s love of his father, a brother’s of his siblings and even on a man’s love of a woman; and all those loves made his life richer instead of vacant. He was man, made of flesh, blood and spirit, and to live was what his body was made for.

Ned looked up when the door to his bedroom was opened.

It was his brother, with a weary air to him.

“What happened, Ben?”, Ned asked, instantly fearing for the worst.

“News of the worst kind”, Benjen replied sadly. “Your companion, Lieutenant Arthur… dead. He was killed yesterday, and it was said that he was aiding a woman and her children, she was Lady Ashara’s friend, Princess Elia Martell… she’s dead too, and so are her little ones.”

 

_They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:_

_Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn._

Elia Martell was born in the autumn, when the sun was warming but not burning.

Arthur Dayne was born in the spring, on a starry, starry night.

Elia was daughter, sister, wife, mother and friend.

Arthur was son, brother and companion.

Elia was smart, kind and stoic.

Arthur was skilled, virtuous and loyal.

One was unbowed, unbent, unbroken.

The other rose higher than anyone else.

Elia was the sun.

Arthur was the star.

_At the going down of the sun and in the morning,_

_We will remember them._

 

 

Ashara lied down on the ground, her legs incapable of moving, her body unable to breathe.

Tears streamed down her face and left her breathless; and her wailings were so deep that they caused her empty belly to ache.

She had never felt pain of this kind, so sudden and already so cavernous. It was a lie, what they said about one not really feeling pain when one heard the news about a passing. Sometimes the loss was so unfathomable that it could not really be ignored or brushed off. Sometimes its effects were very abrupt.

Ashara suspected that the wound of a sword would have hurt less. She wanted the sword; she wanted someone to shoot her dead, or to be drowned, or to be hanged. Any sort of death would be less painful than the one she had experienced.

Her brother. Her best friend and her children. All gone. 

The children. 

The little ones.

Butchered. 

Ashara retched down when the image of that struck her. 

There was no justice in this world.

 

 

In other lives, Ashara was utterly alone. In other lives, she decided to go with the ones she had lost. In other lives, she could find no light in the darkness.

But in this life, things happened in a different way.

“All the angels are singing for them, my lady”, Wylla whispered on her mistress’s ear when she discovered the woman passed out on the floor.

Wylla lied down next to Ashara and hugged the other woman, through every spasm and sob, the maid did not let go.

“Cry all you want. It is good to cry. I am here for you”, Wylla said to Ashara, stroking her friend’s hair with tenderness and love. “Do not fear.”

Ashara cried the whole night, and she did not cease for the next day, or for the following week. She cried and did not have the disposition to get out of her bed, and the tears were so many that she kept on crying even when there was cause for joy.

Consuelo, whom Ashara had once despised and ridiculed, finally arrived from America, bringing Allyria along.

“They are gone”, Ashara said when Consuelo’s arms were encompassing her in a warm embrace. “I cannot live without them.”

“Oh, my darling”, Consuelo spoke to her with a kindness Ashara did not think she deserved. “You are stronger than you give yourself credit for.”

“I am a weakling. I was never as strong as Arthur, as stoic as Elia or as steady as Allen. I am weak.”

Consuelo grabbed Ashara’s chin and made her look at her.

“Did you not grow up in this place? Do you not have people to care for and after you? Did you not hold this place together when times were tough? You did. You persisted, day after day, even when you were alone, even when you thought that there was no reason to persist anymore. You will keep on persisting.”

Ashara gasped.

“I could not possibly…!”

Consuelo steadfastly held her sister-in-law in her arms.

“You will”, Consuelo repeated, very sure of her convictions. “You will learn to find solace in the ones that are left and in yourself. And with time you will learn to look for joy in the things you have got.”

Ashara hardly believed Consuelo’s words, but an instinct moved her and she soon found herself hugging back her sister.

Allyria barely understood whatever tragedy was ensuing, but she still picked up flowers from the garden and went to visit her elder sister in her bedroom.

“Your hair is so beautiful”, Allyria said in awe of the long raven tresses. “Will you let me braid it? Please?”

Ashara did not have the heart to refuse such an offer, and reluctantly allowed her little sister to do so.

When Ashara felt Allyria’s small fingers moving around her hair, the memory of Elia doing the same many years prior resurfaced and sprang tears upon her eyes.

Allyria hesitated when she saw Ashara bawling, but when she turned to leave she found the maid Wylla standing by the door, all watchful gaze.

“Go on, little lady”, Wylla encouraged her. “She is crying because she needs it.”

Allyria braided Ashara’s hair, and fixed the flowers in it.

 

 

“Good morning, Captain Stark”, Allen Dayne greeted his guest wistfully. “Good news finally arrived, as I am glad to communicate you of the end of the war.”

Eddard knew that Allen was not glad to communicate him of anything. All gladness was hollow when one considered the millions of lives lost on all ends.

The worst of it all, Eddard thought, was the fact that all those lives were wasted because of reasons so superficial that no one could really enunciate all of them properly. Of course, most of those lives had been lost due to loyalty or duty, and Eddard thought that there was a sense of honour in that, but then he reasoned that ordinary men should not have had to give their lives in loyalty to powerful men who cared not a whit about them, or in duty to causes that seemed more like caprices.

Eddard knew that the French were calling them _une géneration perdue._

“At last”, was everything that Eddard thought appropriate to comment on.

“Indeed”, Allen replied, never losing his dignity.

They were silent for a long moment, sharing their thoughts on the aftermath. There was a sense of understanding and respect between the two men.

“Lord Dayne, I never got the chance to properly talk to you. Firstly, I offer my condolences on the passing of Lieutenant Dayne. He was the bravest man I ever met, the most loyal, and the best in every sense. I will not forget what he did for me. I feel deeply for your loss.”

Allen smiled, but it did not reach his eyes.

“Thank you, Captain. Your words are comforting.”

“And also… I would like to express my gratitude for the way you handled the whole altercation I brought upon your household. For that I am sorry.”

“Do not feel sorry, Captain… after everything you have done for my siblings, it was more than clear that I would stand by your side during your trials. You have ensured mine and my family’s loyalty forevermore.”  

Eddard nodded in respect, touched by that man’s confidence in him, to which he felt unworthy.

“But if I may ask you so… I would never want to impose, but the circumstances have brought me to it. My sister, Ashara, is still unwell. She cries all day long and wastes away in grief, in places beyond my reach. I do not wish to intrude and ask what is your relationship with her, however, I do know that you hold some importance and meaning to her. I care not if you are committed to another; I ask not of you to disregard your vows in favour of my sister; I only ask of you to try to help her.”

“I will be honest with you, my lord.”

“Please do.”

“Whatever she feels for me, it is mutual. I would marry her if I could, I would have married her after a week if I could have done so. The Lord knows that I want to stay by her side until the end of my days, but my wishes are only for myself to keep. I cannot marry her and ruin an innocent woman’s reputation; I cannot marry her if I am to be stripped of my honour. But you are right. After everything, I am indebted to her in so many ways, and I do owe her my support in this time.”

“So will you stay, at least until she is better?” Allen repeated, daring to hope.

“I will stay for as long as she needs me to.”

And he did.

 

 

The last rays of the twilight sun caused the entire world to become endlessly violet.

The horses were eating grass, oblivious to the whole chaos surrounding them.

Nearby, Ashara took as much comfort as she could in Eddard’s intimacy.

“Is it selfish of me to realize that I miss the person that I was around them as much as I miss them?” Ashara asked to the only one who still made her heart beat faster.

“No”, Ned replied quietly. “We all miss little bits of ourselves.”

Ashara was silent, contemplative.

Ned talked to her, because he had been through what she was feeling now.

“Let the person you were go, bury her with them, but do not forget her. Months, perhaps years from now on, when you are living a new, happy life, make sure to remember them… and when you do, you remember her as well. You remember how it felt like to be her, and you remember all that she laughed at and all that she hurt about.”

Ashara cried for the last time.

 

 

Eddard only left Starfall when he learned that his nephew was still alive, living on a French orphanage. By then, Ashara had chosen life.

 

 

Oberyn Martell returned home after months of raging in wastelands, and his anger never really weakened, it only simmered beneath his smooth surface.

Nevertheless, when Ashara found herself among his bedsheets, she wondered if he was healing himself with her presence as much as she was healing in his.

He held her middle and breathed in the nape of her neck even after they were done, until they dozed off.

“Thank you”, Ashara breathed, feeling her body coming alive again. “I needed that.”

Oberyn smirked, not maliciously. “Anytime, my dear.”

Ashara laughed and playfully smacked his shoulder. Oberyn grinned, rubbed her naked shoulder and then went back to kissing her skin, all thoughts of sleep gone from his mind.

Ashara closed her eyes and delighted herself at the sensation.

 

 

Oberyn would never marry her, Ashara knew. Still, she enjoyed their liaisons and found some degree of happiness in them. Sex, Oberyn taught her, had the power to cure, and, as such, was something to be honoured, not to be ashamed of. God made their bodies for that.

Oberyn was a generous lover and a dear friend; Ashara was grateful to him.

 

 

“Allen, are you quite sure of your decision? I think you are taking a bit of a risk, if I may say so”, Ashara reluctantly protested. She did not want to harbour vain hopes.

Allen smiled kindly, firm in his verdict.

“I am sure, and I still intend to have plenty of heirs, thank you very much. You will have to be the breadwinner of this family for them.”

Ashara smiled the smile of a girl who was finally getting recognition.

“Alright, then. I will be the best estate manager this land has ever seen”, she said, and Allen grinned from ear to ear.

“That’s my girl”, he said appreciatively, kissing her forehead. Ashara accepted his affections with an open heart.

The door to Lord Dayne’s study was opened, and Penn announced Consuelo in.

Allen got up from his chair in excitement.

“Oh, Consuelo! Come here! Ashara, we have news-“

“I am afraid the news will have to wait, as I must go away to another engagement. See you at dinnertime, I promise”, Ashara quickly excused herself, while all three people watched her go with some kind of pride.

“She has spirit”, Consuelo commented, with Allen’s hand resting on her swollen belly. “I knew she had it in her.”

“Indeed, she does.”

“What is it that you were going to tell her, dear?”

“Merely that our Edric shall go by Ned. I think she will be happy to hear about it.”

Even Penn was a tad touched.

“I offer congratulations in the name of the staff, my lord, and my lady. And if I may speak on a more personal note: that is a good choice for a name, sir.”

Allyria, of course, squealed in excitement when she heard about it, and made Wylla take her to the village to buy gifts for the baby.

 

 

Ashara unexpectedly liked Catelyn. The woman was sensible, prudent and gracious; basically she had every trait that Ashara esteemed. Ashara knew that they would never be the best of friends, but there was nothing wrong in that. Not all acquaintances were meant to be close, after all. Still, Catelyn was a good woman, and Ashara approved of her company.

Ashara still glanced a second too long at Catelyn’s husband, and there was no point in trying to keep herself from it, for the memories he had given her were too precious to be forgotten. She would always cherish her time with him, and would always think of him with affection. She would carry the love she felt for him in her heart until that same heart stopped beating.

But Ashara discovered that her heart was big, and in it there was room for many loves. There was room for the people that were gone, for the people that were with her at the moment and for the people that were still to come.

When Eddard introduced her to his long-time family friend, Barristan Selmy, over tea time, Ashara put down her cup and smiled at the man, amusing herself to see an old man blushing at her attentions. Ashara enchanted herself, feeling it all begin again.

She noticed how proud of her accomplishments she was when she told Barristan of her work with the estate and saw him perching himself on his seat in interest. It was at that moment that she realized how fulfilling her endeavours were, and she smiled quietly, only to herself, and, for the first time in her life, Ashara really loved herself. The feeling was ephemeral, and there were days in which it was not enough and the losses all crashed down on her, leaving her crippled with sadness and indignation, but most of the times, it was enough, if only barely so.  

As Eddard once told her, life was for living.

 

 

_In Flanders fields the poppies blow_

_Between the crosses, row on row,_

_That mark our place; and in the sky_

_The larks, still bravely singing, fly_

_Scarce heard amid the guns below._

_We are the Dead. Short days ago_

_We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,_

_Loved and were loved, and now we lie,_

_In Flanders fields._

_Take up our quarrel with the foe:_

_To you from failing hands we throw_

_The torch; be yours to hold it high._

_If ye break faith with us who die_

_We shall not sleep, though_ _poppies grow_

_In Flanders fields._

\- In Flanders Fields, John McCrae, 1915 -

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poem in italics is the "Ode of Remembrance", an ode taken from Laurence Binyon's poem, "For the Fallen" (published in The Times in September 1914).  
> The poem at the end is "In Flanders Fields", written by John McCrae (published in 1915).
> 
> Aaaand we're done!! I hope you've all liked the ending (you could tell it was rushed, but sometimes less is more effective than more). I'd like to thank you for reading, subscribing, leaving kudos and sharing your thoughts. You're all very sweet, I'm going to miss you guys! <3 <3  
> This was a special story to me, and I have absolutely no idea how I, a very millennial Latina, managed to write more than 20,000 words about a love affair in WWI England but lol I guess it could have been worse amirite

**Author's Note:**

> When I had the idea to put together this pairing with this particular AU, a quick search revealed that there already was a wonderful work with a similar idea! I read it at once and obviously loved it! "Among Stars In The Sky", by shipperman, is a masterpiece and you all should read it too! http://archiveofourown.org/works/5775220/chapters/13309693  
> "Look for the silver lining", as mentioned in the summary, is a 1919 song by Jerome Kern & B. G. DeSylva, for the 1921 musical Zip Goes a Million. An exquisite cover by Marion Harris was played on Downton Abbey, and can be heard here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eImvscBf8uU  
> The poem at the beginning is "August 1914", by May Wedderburn Cannan. You can read it here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57362/august-1914-56d23ace66a9d
> 
> <3


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